# TF in cold climate



## Sickdog5 (Jun 8, 2016)

Maybe a stupid question but is it possible to go TF in a cold climate like mine? People laugh at me when I say I would like to try it maybe some day.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Sickdog5 said:


> Maybe a stupid question but is it possible to go TF in a cold climate like mine? People laugh at me when I say I would like to try it maybe some day.


Kind of funny this thought that TF is more difficult in cold climates. It has been stated on this forum many times, but what is it based on? Is it because AHB do not survive cold winters or what?

I think it is actually easier, because the more north you go, the longer is the broodless period and the less chances for varroa to increse.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

You are totally wrong from my mild winter area mites and bees little experiment last year. Going on
for 3 seasons now. But last year was consider a larger scale experiment than before. It is totally tf!
On a small scale you can certainly duplicate what I've gone through. Read up on my post constant mite
removal management started late winter of last year. It is cold but removing the mites is very possible.
They are going through another natural bee break this summer waiting for a mated queen in 2 more weeks.
In a long and cold winter environment the free running mites will be on the young nurse bees. They can live
for a few months within the bees cluster. The newly cap broods will be a safe area for these mites to multiply if
the queen lays in small winter patches. This is my close up little bees experiment observation. In order to go tf, you
have to have a method to take out these young nurse bees destroying mites. It is the exact situation that caused my
hives to completely crashed without any treatment comes next Spring time expansion. So, no, it is much more difficult
to manage a tf in a long cold winter environment. For one thing the bees will not groom as much in a cluster mode all winter
long. Don't you know that certain bee specie will lay all winter long?


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Sickdog5 said:


> Maybe a stupid question but is it possible to go TF in a cold climate like mine? People laugh at me when I say I would like to try it maybe some day.


In a cold climate the bees must be healthier going into winter because they must live longer and still be able to start the first brood in spring.
If the tf bees are much mite infested in autumn, they will not be able to do that and will not be able to warm the brood in spring. Isolation from food can happen because a small cluster will stay on the first small brood patches and starve.
The first brood patches in january will have all the phoretic mites left. Mostly, the crashes are in that time of year.

In a warm climate the bees can outbreed the mites in early spring. Later there is often a draught in this climate so the bees will have a brood break before breeding winter bees. This can stop the mites.

My personal experience confirmed this. The first winter tf was warm and all hives survived. They did not make a break and always had enough new healthy bees. The last winter was much colder and longer and I had many crashes.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

SiWolKe said:


> In a cold climate the bees must be healthier going into winter because they must live longer and still be able to start the first brood in spring.
> My personal experience confirmed this. The first winter tf was warm and all hives survived. They did not make a break and always had enough new healthy bees. The last winter was much colder and longer and I had many crashes.


Very interesting point, thanks SiWolKe!


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

beepro said:


> In order to go tf, you
> have to have a method to take out these young nurse bees destroying mites. It is the exact situation that caused my
> hives to completely crashed without any treatment comes next Spring time expansion. So, no, it is much more difficult
> to manage a tf in a long cold winter environment. For one thing the bees will not groom as much in a cluster mode all winter
> long. Don't you know that certain bee specie will lay all winter long?


Ok, so you are with SiwolKe, that hard winter makes TF beekeeping harder.

I cannot really argue. I have never had bees in a warmer climate.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Juhani Lunden said:


> Ok, so you are with SiwolKe, that hard winter makes TF beekeeping harder.
> 
> I cannot really argue. I have never had bees in a warmer climate.


Not exactly harder in my eyes. Very cold winter could be very good against the mites because of the brood brake. 
We have not such cold. But here winter could be very long, sometimes 5-6 months with small brood patches. This is extremely dangerous.

But in a cold long winter you need another kind of management, which I am developing just now and hope it will help.

First: reduce the space to the absolute minimum in late fall, take out every comb not used and put in a divider if necessary.

Second: The bees must have a maximum of stores and mixed kinds of honey, so not all honey is crystallized. That because a cluster is not able to use water or condensation much if it is not mobile.
These must be capped until end of september so the winter bees can be without too much work.
Third: I use big boxes, so now I have reduced to one box. The honey stores I will arrange mostly to one side. The bees already do this themselves in my hives, but not all.
Fourth: insulation only on top. If insulation all around keeps the bees active they will breed more and use much more stores. In a colder and longer winter this could be bad. 
I will only use a windbreak.
Fifth: I will make some small holes into my combs just under the honey domes, so the cluster is able to move better. That because my frame bars are thick all around. My foundations are thicker than natural comb also.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

SiWk and my observation is the same because we already went through this before. She is more
observant than I am. It took me almost 3 season to come to the same conclusion as her on the mites and bees on overwintering. The long rainy winter season and the yearly arctic chills can bring a small cluster bee hive down very quickly.
I had to design a little bee experiment to find out the hard way. Now that both of us had confirmed it I no longer have to verify it on this forum on my constant mite management post. I already knew the outcome every year after the 1st and 2nd season of testing it. It is a good learning experience for me nevertheless. 
Now to the overwinter improvement for better survival.
1) Depending on how large the winter cluster is, put a 10 lbs. of Lauri's sugar bricks on the top bars. Even a 2-4 frame of winter bees with small brood patches can live and expand on early Spring days if given enough winter food--patty subs + sugar bricks on. Already tested this experiment on the last 2 seasons following Lauri's footsteps on overwintering.
2) Restrict the bee cluster to stay within the compact brood nest area while having access to the food source constantly--honey and sugar bricks. Condensation will be use to soften the sugar bricks so the bees can utilize them. In a large box area the bees cannot be compact in enough. We want a compacted brood nest area to overwinter in.
3) Drill a 1" hole in the center of the thick comb so that the bees can better move and share hive resources with each others.
Because the sugar bricks are on all winter long, even with a pro long cold winter or over insulation the bees can still survive in the absent of the mites. That is why the bees going to the almond run will have more bees coming out of winter. This is also the strategy I'm using to overwinter my bees to grow faster during the early Spring time. The more they feed the more I will supply them. In regions that cannot check on their hives then they have to use another better overwintering method on their hives.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

Did you ever listen to three blind men describe an elephant? One feels the trunk and describes accordingly. One feels a leg and you can guess what he has to say. The third feels of the abdomen and his description is different than the others.

I think a moderate climate makes TF easier because there is less stress on the bees. I still see a winter brood break which tends to disrupt mite reproduction.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Being north of the range of small hive beetles and wax moths has lots of advantages but that is more a summer thing. Being north will be more likely to give you relative isolation from other mite ridden bees and makes mite control easier. Given there is a definite shutdown of brooding that also contributes to ease of mite control no matter whether TF or not. 

I dont think that the 2" circles of brood raised in batches starting February is enough to get the bees locked on brood; a false spring in March certainly can though. Italian based genetic bees are much more prone to this. Carni / Russian bees intuitively resist the urge to brood extensively until nectar and pollen is coming in the front door. I dont see that being TF or not matters. Starvation and mites are the big killers.

If you can keep Italian bees alive tf in warmer climates, I dont think you will have any worse problems keeping Carnis here, where winter gets to 40 below and lasts 7 months.


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## DR Beers (Apr 1, 2016)

Simple answer to the OP, possible? Yes.

Easier than more mild climates? I don't know.

Different for various climates? I would say yes.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

> I think a moderate climate makes TF easier because there is less stress on the bees. I still see a winter brood break which tends to disrupt mite reproduction.


No. It´s making it harder. Much more stress and if there is a break it´s too short. IMHO 4 years beekeeping. I heard from treating beekeepers that it´s almost impossible to treat a broodless hive with OA because it´s never brood less.
The only good thing about a moderate climate is that the bees have no dysentery because they break cluster more often.



> I dont think that the 2" circles of brood raised in batches starting February is enough to get the bees locked on brood; a false spring in March certainly can though.


I think they can be locked in february even in a colder climate than mine. March is the most dangerous month. I never had a starving hive but some were locked and froze in february or march, isolated from stores.



> In a large box area the bees cannot be compact in enough.


Yes they can. Use a divider or have all frames around the late broodnest filled with honey. Take off the top boxes very early, in july, so they make big honey domes and have pollen under. This is locale.


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

I ran 100% TF for several years in NE Ohio. I see neg 20 F most winters. I see it cold enough so zero fly days for six weeks or more every winter. My experience was never winter on honey for best results. Particularly never winter on fall honey. Stores made from sugar syrup are much better as has been proven over and over. Raise and winter enough nucs to replace the dead outs and still have enough extra nucs to make more nucs without having to rob production hives. Expect 30% winter dead outs most years from both production hives and nucs and occasionally worse. So, that means wintering at least one nuc for each production hive. Do not even think about trying it with any less than five production hives. But, it is possible to be TF in cold winters for sure. It also helps a lot to have bees that do not build much of a population, even in late spring, as that limits the mites breeding potential, but it also kills honey production. I never had any problem with hives crashing in late summer, which seems to happen more farther south when the mites have longer to build up. My deaths were all in winter. I would not even think of trying it with package bees or high performing queens. They make too many bees and give the mites too much breeding potential. Strong hives also are the robbers that go raid hives weakened by mites and bring home loads of mites from the mite bombs.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

We have zero fly days 4 months or more, but even though, studies have shown that in the spring there are only about 40% less mites in the spring that in autumn. This is quite accurately the same as the loss of bees during the winter. Broodless period is hard to study without seriously injuring the hives, I have never seen such study made of the Finnish bees, but anyhow "wintermites" live long.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Richard Cryberg said:


> I ran 100% TF for several years in NE Ohio. I see neg 20 F most winters. I see it cold enough so zero fly days for six weeks or more every winter. My experience was never winter on honey for best results. Particularly never winter on fall honey. Stores made from sugar syrup are much better as has been proven over and over. Raise and winter enough nucs to replace the dead outs and still have enough extra nucs to make more nucs without having to rob production hives. Expect 30% winter dead outs most years from both production hives and nucs and occasionally worse. So, that means wintering at least one nuc for each production hive. Do not even think about trying it with any less than five production hives. But, it is possible to be TF in cold winters for sure. It also helps a lot to have bees that do not build much of a population, even in late spring, as that limits the mites breeding potential, but it also kills honey production. I never had any problem with hives crashing in late summer, which seems to happen more farther south when the mites have longer to build up. My deaths were all in winter. I would not even think of trying it with package bees or high performing queens. They make too many bees and give the mites too much breeding potential. Strong hives also are the robbers that go raid hives weakened by mites and bring home loads of mites from the mite bombs.


Dick says it all in a few words. The dilemma.
The traditional beekeeping with big production hives and small nucs works not in all locations, IMO it works if you are isolated or the location is flooded with your resistant drones already.

So we hobbyists or sideliners have to use a new strategy perhaps, splitting in such a way we have brood brakes and some honey surplus too. So no "production hives", maybe more hives for the same honey harvest.
Some will say we have only "dinks"  but it seems to me Seeley was not always wrong in his observations.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

If we look closely at Seeley's observation his smaller hives will keep the mites in check. This is
exactly what I've manually duplicated last season by breaking down the big production hives into smaller
nuc hives with a newly mated late solstice queen. Less mites to deal with whereas a big production hive will
have many more mites infecting the winter bees. Overwintering in smaller nuc hives will definitely work for me here. I will
publish my results after this season is done.


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

beepro said:


> Overwintering in smaller nuc hives will definitely work for me here. I will
> publish my results after this season is done.


Your results have nothing at all to do with this topic. This topic is wintering in cold climates. You have zero clue what cold weather is as you have zero cold weather where you live. If you want to talk about wintering in warm climates start a new thread.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

When I feel cold as the weather changes and my bees feel cold by clustering up then it is consider
a cold climate here. I'm not talking about sub zero temp. mind you. So what is consider cold to you?
If I have to wear a winter jacket with goose feathers padding inside then it is really cold her. Check out our
yearly arctic chills weather pattern. Do you know which month that is?


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

When I feel cold as the weather changes and my bees feel cold by clustering up then it is consider
a cold climate here. I'm not talking about sub zero temp. mind you. So what is consider cold to you?
If I have to wear a winter jacket with goose feathers padding inside then it is really cold here. Check out our
yearly arctic chills weather pattern. Do you know which month that is? Yes, even in that cold an environment I
can still design my mites and bees tf option. What have you done so far?


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

Richard Cryberg said:


> Your results have nothing at all to do with this topic. This topic is wintering in cold climates. You have zero clue what cold weather is as you have zero cold weather where you live. If you want to talk about wintering in warm climates start a new thread.


:applause:


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

beepro said:


> When I feel cold as the weather changes and my bees feel cold by clustering up then it is consider
> a cold climate here. I'm not talking about sub zero temp. mind you. So what is consider cold to you?
> If I have to wear a winter jacket with goose feathers padding inside then it is really cold here. Check out our
> yearly arctic chills weather pattern. Do you know which month that is? Yes, even in that cold an environment I
> can still design my mites and bees tf option. What have you done so far?


You know nothing at all about wintering in cold winters. Where you live it simply does not get cold. Cold is when you have 30 consecutive days it does not get above freezing even in the day time. Cold is when you get up in the morning and the thermometer says negative 15 deg F. You do not even get cold enough where you live to need a winter coat. Cold is when you open the door and find 20 inches of snow on your walk. Where I live in January it is shirt sleeve weather if it gets above 40 deg for the high. If it is above 40 deg and sunshine my bees fly a bit because they have not been outside the hive in weeks. You do not have a day in the whole month of January that cold. Your climate is closer to tropical than it is close to cold. You do not even need a winter coat, much less one with goose feathers. That is a total waste of money in your very mild climate. Even in my climate most of the time I just wear a jacket unless I am going to be outside for at least an hour. And that is at temperatures lower than you have ever experienced in your life where you live.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Beepro your weather is more like mine and you can´t compare that with really cold weather. We have 2-4 weeks sometimes when it is under zero day and night and some days can happen when it´s 25°C under zero at night.
The bees fly with 8°C.
But let´s not quarrel, back to the topic. If it´s as cold as you say, Dick, it´s better in my eyes for longevity and mite brood brake, if the bees have good stores and are not isolated from stores. IMO. 
I´m with Juhani there.
But not for dysentery.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Maybe a stupid question but is it possible to go TF in a cold climate like mine? 

You get several months of brood break in a cold climate. You don't get that in a warm climate. I would say it's easier in a cold climate.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Ok then. Mine is not as cold compare to the snow country as we don't have snow here.
Still you have to get the mites out of there before overwintering them. If not then early Spring will
have a hive crashed for sure if you don' t have the resistant bees. I keep on adding the resistant 
bees here so 2 winter without any treatment. I'm still experimenting though cold or not I'm going for it.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

beepro said:


> Ok then. Mine is not as cold compare to the snow country as we don't have snow here.
> Still you have to get the mites out of there before overwintering them. If not then early Spring will
> have a hive crashed for sure if you don' t have the resistant bees. I keep on adding the resistant
> bees here so 2 winter without any treatment. I'm still experimenting though cold or not I'm going for it.


Really, no treatment at all? Just removing mites with tweezers and stuff?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Each has its challenges. 
A long cold winter requires more durable winter bees.
A short mild winter...like mine....you get no brood break and the mites keep increasing. This whole idea of bees outbreeding mites in spring is a fantasy...at least where I live.
failure or success....are probably much the same for tf bees in each environment.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Yes, it is only a fantasy as we had witnessed it many times before. Without getting the
mites out of the hives it will only lead to a crashed hive situation during the early Spring days.
That is why I'm trying my best with different methods to try to keep them down to less than 1% in
all of my nuc hives. Production hives just harbor too many mites without any treatment. Nucs are more
manageable as I can deal with the mites one nuc at a time this long rainy winter. Tf is only possible when you
keep the mites population down year round. On top of that add the resistant bees in will do. One commercial source
that I know of his bees can deal with the ants on an ant hill. If they can deal with the ants then I'm sure the mites will
not stand a good chance either. Too bad they are a bit aggressive for back yard beekeeping.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

beemandan said:


> Each has its challenges.


agreed. 

here we normally have a short mild winter along with an extended summer dearth and in most years will get two brood breaks, at least that's what the feral derivatives i work with do.

more so than a warm or cold climate in my view is whether or not the local landscape offers what it takes for feral or otherwise unmanaged colonies to make it season after season.

being treatment free is more likely to be successful in places where a viable feral population is sustained, thereby indicating natural resistance and an environment that is offering the right stuff. 

jmho, but i believe my area has enough of that right stuff and that the drone contribution from the surviving ferals around here are a big part of what is allowing me to enjoy success off treatments.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Juhani Lunden said:


> We have zero fly days 4 months or more, but even though, studies have shown that in the spring there are only about 40% less mites in the spring that in autumn. This is quite accurately the same as the loss of bees during the winter.


A least some years ago beeresearchers in Finland estimated that mites multiply with a factor of 20-40X in a summer (doubling every 3 weeks). 

And when about half (40%) of the mites die in winter, the one year increase is 10-20x the starting population. 


Long winter may require healthy bees(especially nosema), but on the other hand long broodless winter is very good for the brood diseases health. 
On the other hand we have the worst records in AFB in the whole Europe and that is because we do not have hard enough legistlation (no burning diseased hives, no bee inspectors on the field like in NZ etc.).


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Juhani Lunden said:


> On the other hand we have the worst records in AFB in the whole Europe and that is because we do not have hard enough legistlation (no burning diseased hives, no bee inspectors on the field like in NZ etc.).


At least you don´t have a law which forces you to treat. Or do you?
Because of that law I started the IPM.

AFB is the responsibility of the beekeeper and harshly handled here. If found we have restriction areas and all hives are checked.
Formerly the hives and bees were burned, but they could not eliminate all spores. So today they will save your bees if possible.

New in my area is that you need a special health certificate for migration.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Juhani Lunden said:


> We have zero fly days 4 months or more, but even though, studies have shown that in the spring there are only about 40% less mites in the spring that in autumn. This is quite accurately the same as the loss of bees during the winter. Broodless period is hard to study without seriously injuring the hives, I have never seen such study made of the Finnish bees, but anyhow "wintermites" live long.


I haven't seen that with my hives. 10 percent mites in fall, near 0 in spring. On the survivors that is.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

lharder said:


> I haven't seen that with my hives. 10 percent mites in fall, near 0 in spring. On the survivors that is.


:thumbsup:


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

flip side..... brood breaks may increase DWV 


> Altogether, these results tend to show that V. destructor induces more wing deformity in emerging honeybees when it has experienced a longer phoretic phase, because of the Deformed Wing Virus transmission. Either because the newly born bee cannot emerge or because it is thrown out of the hive by the worker bees, these malformations often lead to an early death [51,60], as the correlation between deformity and death found in our study suggests. This phenomenon could be intensified in untreated overwintering hives where mites had to go through a long phoretic period because of the absence of brood


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4838260/


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

lharder said:


> I haven't seen that with my hives. 10 percent mites in fall, near 0 in spring. On the survivors that is.


I was speaking of normal hives ( a study made about 10 years ago). This was a study made by MTT (Finnish Agricultural Research center).

If there was 200 mites in the autumn in the hive, there would be about 120 mites in the spring. (40 % less)

This study made in Finland proves that mites can survive the extremely long winter of Finland very well in normal hives. 


No studies made with TF bees.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

lharder said:


> I haven't seen that with my hives. 10 percent mites in fall, near 0 in spring. On the survivors that is.


This is actually pretty astonishing, compared with those results from Finland and normal hives.

10% infestation means about 1000-2000 mites in the fall, and maybe some hundred left in spring (near 0).

You have made some sugar roll/ alcohol wash tests? With how many hives and how many winters?


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

That´s so very interesting! Thanks for that link, msl!


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Msl


> flip side..... brood breaks may increase DWV


Double flip side, from the study?
The bees are dieing before emergence or thrown out of the hive by the bees.

Along the lines of what mel deselkoen says about after a brood break the mites loading up on the first layed eggs and the larva and mite dieing and being thrown out of the hive reducing over all mite load.
Thoughts?

Is there any question in anybodies mind that the antidotal proof is brood breaks seem to work?
gww


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Thoughts? 

In my little experiment using an extended brood breaks along with confining the laying queen, using Mel's method
will eliminate 90% of the adult mites. The other 10% will be deal with hive by hive situation according to their mite
load issue. After that another brood break with these hives will make a late summer new laying queen to take care of
the 1% remaining mites, all without any treatment. Mel's method works if you how to implement it over here. I took it
a step further to start all year long "constant mite removal management" post. Implementing it right now. 
Yes, the young bees will received heavy casualty but over all the entire colony is preserved. This is also good for testing the mite fighting ability of the newly mated queen. No mite re-infestation so far! The DWV noted on that study got decreased because I got the resistant bees through the II process from the sellers to start with. Overall, I've very satisfied with this little experiment and my bee's progress. The mites don't like constant interruption, the bees just don't care or that they cannot help it.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Thoughts? 

In my little experiment using an extended brood breaks along with confining the laying queen, using Mel's method
will eliminate 90% of the adult mites. The other 10% will be deal with hive by hive situation according to their mite
load issue. After that another brood break with these hives will make a late summer new laying queen to take care of
the 1% remaining mites, all without any treatment. Mel's method works if you know how to implement it over here. I took it
a step further to start all year long "constant mite removal management" post. Implementing it right now. 
Yes, the young bees will received heavy casualty but over all the entire colony is preserved. This is also good for testing the mite fighting ability of the newly mated queen. No mite re-infestation so far! The DWV noted on that study got decreased because I got the resistant bees through the II process from the sellers to start with. Overall, I've very satisfied with this little experiment and my bee's progress. The mites don't like constant interruption, the bees just don't care or that they cannot help it.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

It´s a non chemical approach but still a "treatment" strategy IMO.

You might compare this with the IPM management I started this year last month. Keep the hives alive and shift the queens to better ones.

To evaluate the hives and queens I realized that I have to wait until august fort the colonies to be established ones. Now I see which ones have lower mite counts, before reducing to winter breeding they had no problems holding the mites at bay.
But I have to wait until next year to shift the queens, having no reserve, and I don´t know if my IPM will come too late.

So in my case, I need more time to develop my kind of beekeeping and will probably have more failures. But that´s life, results will need patience.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

I like your attitudes almost like mine but with different IPM method. One way I can see is that you have to 
make more new queens every season, at least 2 or more if you can spare some to evaluate the year to year
mite resistant of your colony. This is because the drones at the DCAs are not the same every time. To catch the
good genetics locally you have to test out at least 2 new queens every season. Got this idea one season because out
of 6 queens from the same mom not all of the daughters got the same mite resistant from the varied drones we have here.
One hive got zero mite but I don't know how to keep her genetic alive being too inexperienced back then.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Same here.

The 4 AMM hives have one original mother but now the descendants show different traits. One strain has almost no mites, the other is terribly infested ( one is with ultrasonic unit right now).
The one with +-no mites I plan to move into my other bee yard before it gets the mites through drifting.
The other I will try to rescue after my experiment.

But: it could be possible all are "resistant" and those two just robbed other beekeeper`s hives and got the mites. Most foreign bee colonies have not been treated so far. I´m not isolated.
Could be coincidence that it is one granddaughter and daughter of her.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

SiW
If you are saying it is still a treatment in answer to what I was posting, I was just asking msl if the study could indicate that the mites were not making it to hatch and maby it worked like mel indicated in his splitting when we had a brood break during derths and winters. So more virus in young bees but also the mites being knocked back far enough due to the virus not allowing the bees to hatch causing fewer mites in the hive so that you have a clean point to start the whole process again.

If you were commenting to beepro that it was still a treatment then just forget everything I just wrote in this post.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Oh sorry gww I meant Beepro. 

Considering the study I saw a newly hatched bee today, whole but weak and dying, with mite on abdomen, pulled out by another bee.
A crippled living one in background of pict.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Wow, good picture. Makes me think I should have picked up the several dead that where right in front of my hive. I have not seen a mite on a bee yet but then again, it was this spring before I could for sure tell the differrance between a drone and worker. I don't know if I am bragging that I could finaly see good enough to tell or complaining on that my eyes are so bad that it took that long.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

The green plates are old advertising metal plates I put on the ground in front of my hives so I can see what they pull out.
Every morning when the sun reaches the hives the cleaning starts and you see what´s going on.
The pict is from the "ultrasonic" colony. One of the two which are "mite bombs". I will do my IPM after the weekend when time for the unit runs out. Hope to save them.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Dups!


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Yep, save and requeen them all next season with more mite fighting power. Same here around
10-11am I will see those ones cannot fly also. Is the ultrasonic machine treatment like the one sold for getting
rid of rats, raccoons, ants , ****roaches, critters, etc? And how long is the treatment run?
Imagine what you can do with the drones from your resistant hive using the II process. This is how 100s of hives
are develop in a season with 100s of II queens. Anytime for me now!


Setup the II syringe:


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Beepro, I talk about it in my thread.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Haa, while you're talking about it, I already took the action of making one. I'm not 
willing to invest $3000 dollars into a complete set up so have to improvised a little. Have
you seen the primitive without the chromes Ii station posted here before. They're pretty much
like sticks connected to the hooks. A very simple, primitive design but works nevertheless. I'm
using whatever local resources that I can find without being too over cost for my II station. Are you 
going to build or buy one?


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

beepro said:


> Haa, while you're talking about it, I already took the action of making one. I'm not
> willing to invest $3000 dollars into a complete set up so have to improvised a little. Have
> you seen the primitive without the chromes Ii station posted here before. They're pretty much
> like sticks connected to the hooks. A very simple, primitive design but works nevertheless. I'm
> ...


Beepro, let´s not hijack this thread.
I bought one, I`m testing it right now and then I decide. If it´s not working I send it to OT to use it against his mole hills.


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## drummerboy (Dec 11, 2015)

I think the OP or someone else should have explained what a 'cold' climate is....as some of those posting on this thread just get a chilly spell and 'think' its cold...

We are in Zone 3, we have gotten stretches in past years where the temps can stay BELOW ZERO for days or weeks, nights can reach 35 below zero F anytime between December and February. Our Winter's can last 6-7 months (time without any blooming flora)

Been messing with Honeybees since the 70's, finally became a BeeKEEPer in 2007, when we went TF, Foundationless and to all Mediums.


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## Kalteisen (Mar 17, 2017)

drummerboy said:


> I think the OP or someone else should have explained what a 'cold' climate is....as some of those posting on this thread just get a chilly spell and 'think' its cold...


Good point, I'm in 5b and with the wet spring and summer, our mite counts are very low. But that winter is a huge help with hive beetles, other pests, and brood breaks.


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## drummerboy (Dec 11, 2015)

Long brood breaks, early splits, and recently, allowing some colonies to swarm, and ideally catching some, all have their benefits to honeybee survival and low mite counts in 'cold' climes IMO.

I've only seen one SHB up here in Zone 3, so far  

It was sent to me, along with several mated queens (no accompanying workers) purchased from Texas many years ago. I often wonder if including workers with those queens would have resulted in seeing none at all...so far...:scratch:

I'm a Milwaukee Native (Left back in the 70's), and about 350 miles North of you now. Despite living in the same State, your growing season (Bee season?) is over two months longer than ours, but 'changes' have been observed with climate lately, so I've been told


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

SiWolKe said:


> Same here.
> 
> The 4 AMM hives have one original mother but now the descendants show different traits.


Worth repeating. Bees have exceptionally high variability due to 1) polyandrous mating, 2) obligate outcrossing, 3) Ultra-high recombination in the mother prior to completion of meiosis. No one, repeat no one, can do open-mated line-breeding of bees. Pretending bees belong to a "race" when they are simply mutts is a core error of backyard beeks. This error is constantly reinforced by so -called "survivor bee" gurus.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

JWChesnut said:


> Worth repeating. Bees have exceptionally high variability due to 1) polyandrous mating, 2) obligate outcrossing, 3) Ultra-high recombination in the mother prior to completion of meiosis. No one, repeat no one, can do open-mated line-breeding of bees. Pretending bees belong to a "race" when they are simply mutts is a core error of backyard beeks. This error is constantly reinforced by so -called "survivor bee" gurus.


Exactly.
Still we can breed from the best and the "survivors" have their value.
Breed from your local best and if you loose the good traits introduce a better queen. It must not be a "race" queen, only a more resistant one.
A race bred is science since there are so many races. Breeding more resistant "mutt" queens is practical beekeeping.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

SiWolKe said:


> Exactly.
> Still we can breed from the best


Breeding from the "best" of 4 hives means nothing. It will one million times worse than the selection made from 1000 breeder queen candidates -- which is what "evil" commercial queen breeders do morning, noon, and night.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> No one, repeat no one, can do open-mated line-breeding of bees


yes but that does not mean you can't select for traits, much work on bee stock was done for hundreds if not thousands of years before II allowed for line breading. 


> Pretending bees belong to a "race" when they are simply mutts is a core error of backyard beeks. This error is constantly reinforced by so -called "survivor bee" gurus.


Lets call a spade a spade, the same holds true for any beekeeper not maintaining there line with II or an isolated matting yard. Bringing in some "survivor bees" genetics from a locally adapted feral land race is no different then bringing in a $200 breeder queen. Most bees are mutts, slectected for color and performance, but mutts nunthe less


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

SiWolKe said:


> Exactly.
> Still we can breed from the best and the "survivors" have their value.
> Breed from your local best and if you loose the good traits introduce a better queen. It must not be a "race" queen, only a more resistant one.
> A race bred is science since there are so many races. Breeding more resistant "mutt" queens is practical beekeeping.


You don´t get the idea. You CAN choose the best, but the next step is not getting you futher, it is getting back because of free mating. Therefore the survivors value, if it had any, is lost. 

Race queen has some uniformity, and chances are you will get better and more equal offspring. With muts the odds are weak.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Are Cordovan queens mutts too? 
Once they are mutted out then they cannot retain their Cordovan color anymore, meaning that
the recessive gene cannot be passed on to the next generation.
Yes, 4 hives is nothing to brag about but if you have ferals around can import other compatible bees
genetic into your apiary every year then you will have more to select from. I would not just settle for
the basic genetics but keep on improving with better and compatible bees.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

First: I have 13 hives to choose from.

Second: what would you call Buckfast breeding by Brother Adam or Elgon breeding by Erik Österlund? 

How many races were involved, just like with you Juhani? You said every serious beekeeper must try new lines every 8 years. So you breed mutts in my eyes.
If you only use artificial insemination, why use new races? Because inbreeding might have an impact!

I never said I can rest in my selection of better queens. 
I get the idea, Juhani, I get it.  You just want to sell your queens which probably perform badly here or probably not. Just like any queen.
Beekeeping is local.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

beepro said:


> Are Cordovan queens mutts too?


Yes


> The cordovan color variation does not constitute a different race and is not known to be inherently linked with any other physical characteristic or behavior. In fact, any stock can be transformed to cordovan color in two generations of a cross and backcross to cordovan drones.


 http://www.glenn-apiaries.com/cordovan.html
The loss of the cordovan coloring in out crossing has been used to track the degradation of a line, illustrating the issues JW point out.



> Second: what would you call Buckfast breeding by Brother Adam


Brother adam had an islated mateing site were he could contoral the drone stock 

Juhani, why would a trait be more queen side inheataibul on a II breeder "race" queen vs a naturally selected feral land race?


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

beepro said:


> Once they are mutted out then they cannot retain their Cordovan color anymore, meaning that
> the recessive gene cannot be passed on to the next generation.


This is pure nonsense. The cordovan gene is perfectly easy to pass on regardless of what color you mate to. If you mate a pure cordovan to anything else the offspring MUST ALWAYS carry one copy of the cordovan gene. As cordovan is a recessive mutant it will not show in the heterozygous offspring. So, it takes a tiny amount of genetics knowledge to recover a homozygous cordovan in subsequent generations. It would be perfectly easy to make a cordovan Carniolan bee and in fact this has been done. You can easy enough find pics of it on the internet. What is generally sold as cordovan is simply a regular Italian queen that is homozygous for the corodovan mutant. The cordovan trait adds absolutely nothing that could not equally be obtained in a regular Italian other than a somewhat lighter color. It is no different than the different colors seen in many breeds of dogs. As such it is improper English to capitalize cordovan. It is also to capitalize the name of any gene unless that name is the first word in a sentence. You would not write "My dog has Black hair." You should not write "A Cordovan bee is yellow." In the first place it is not a true statement and in the second the capital is improper.


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## Fusion_power (Jan 14, 2005)

> Juhani, why would a trait be more queen side inheritable on a II breeder "race" queen vs a naturally selected feral land race?


There are three reasons I can easily think of that make queen side inheritance significant with bee breeding. The first is that every one of a queen's offspring carries one copy of the queen's genes. All female offspring she produces therefore carry one set of genes from the queen and another set of genes from one of the many drones she mated with. This means the colony will reflect the queen's genetics to a far greater degree than any one of the drones she mated with.

Genetic imprinting is when the mother or father turns on or off a gene or set of genes as they produce reproductive cells. In humans, there is a chunk of "imprinted" DNA on chromosome 15. The genes from the father are turned off and the genes from the mother are turned on by the imprinting process. It can also work the other way where a given set of genes are turned on from the father and off from the mother. I have not read of any specific examples of imprinting with honeybees, but every sexually reproducing species (mammals, reptiles, insects, etc) that has been studied in detail so far has had some areas of their genome imprinted.

From a certain perspective, there is no such thing as a drone. Think about this for a minute before rejecting the idea. A drone is a flying gamete representing a few millions of identical sperm. The drone represents a single set of chromosomes from the queen that laid the egg the flying gamete hatched from. When a queen mates, she is mating with the flying gametes of the queens they came from.

An II developed "line" of honeybees has been subjected to selection and/or inbreeding to stabilize the genetics. The result is that homozygosity increases which just means that both copies of a given gene are more likely to be identical. Highly homozygous genetics do NOT occur normally in nature (there are some exceptions, but not a topic for now) in part because of queens mating with multiple drones, in part because of arrhenotokous parthenogenesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenotoky) associated with the sex allele, and in part because honeybees have a very specific mating strategy that avoids homozygous genetics. With II, the breeder can seriously reduce the genetic diversity. The advantage is that certain traits can be "stabilized" which just means the associated gene(s) are homozygous. In a recent study of feral genetics in a population of A. m. Litorea - an African species - 50 different sex alleles were found in a small geographic region. This infers a very high level of heterozygosity in the population, something breeders want to avoid.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

yes its very important, as it the only breeding factor most keepers can control. 
I think I am folowing you, but I get lost how the II homologous "stabilized" gene helps by the time you have a f3 outcrosing with local drones. The cordovan coloring being a good example as is the VHS trait 
maby I am miss understanding Juhani, I take what he said as there is more of a chance of the "race" queens traits being dominant vs a mutt(what every that means in bee world)


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

msl said:


> yes its very important, as it the only breeding factor most keepers can control.
> I think I am folowing you, but I get lost how the II homologous "stabilized" gene helps by the time you have a f3 outcrosing with local drones. The cordovan coloring being a good example as is the VHS trait
> maby I am miss understanding Juhani, I take what he said as there is more of a chance of the "race" queens traits being dominant vs a mutt(what every that means in bee world)


I was saying/meaning that when mother is homologous then the chance to make an error *allready in choosing the mother side *gets smaller. But as you said if freemating is used with the pure bred queen odds to make progress in the long run are minimal.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

SiWolKe said:


> How many races were involved, just like with you Juhani? You said every serious beekeeper must try new lines every 8 years. So you breed mutts in my eyes.
> If you only use artificial insemination, why use new races? Because inbreeding might have an impact!


Races, as you seem to understand the word, don´t exist any more. There are only different breeds made or caused by humans.

I use the words in this way:
Mutt= freemated beeline
Breeder queen/race queen/selected queen = beeline made with controlled matings for several generations(whatever origin(race))

New origins are used to find new qualities, to make the bees better. You cannot say from the looks of a queen what is her breeding value. The qualities have to be tested.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Ok, I understand better now, thanks to all for explaining.

Still, as a simple backyard beekeeper I don´t want to buy queens from a breeder every year, even not from a "resistant" bee breeder who evaluates his lines for mite resistance.
There are too many different facts involved in local beekeeping that I see no advantage in spending so much money and having the local bees supersede the purchased queens the same season.

To me, and this will make the commercial queen breeders very angry, line breeding and queen selling is just money making. You tell beekeepers they will have more success, you give them bad conscience about multiplying local mutts and they require your queens. They "feel" they need them, just as much as the other side "feels" they need survivor queens, even when those could be bred by yourself.

As long as profit lies more in selling queens and nucs instead of the bounties of the hive, this is just a marketing strategy the backyard beekeeper jeopardizes.

Don´t get me wrong, I´m using this purchased genetics too. But for now I´m not convinced that it will be the better way. So far the survivability rate is the same, mutts or purchased queens compared.
And my friend Bartek tested many pure bred "resistant" queens, they were all susceptible and died of mites and virus the first winter.

The new "better stock" I now have is not tested long enough. One queen I have had one winter, she is still alive. The SEEM to be better but too short a time.

But, surely, if the purchased queens will fail, it is always the backyard beekeeper who is too stupid to keep alive the colonies. It´s never the queen which is not adapted to the environment or hurt with artificial insemination.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

SiWolKe said:


> And my friend Bartek tested many pure bred "resistant" queens, they were all susceptible and died of mites and virus the first winter.


BeesFromPoland Bartek?

I don´t remember selling him any queens. 
If I remember correctly he had some freemated daughters of my queens.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

I am in a cold climate, Northern Illinois. We often get week-long stretches of sub-zero F temps, and much longer sub-freezing with no temps warm enough to fly for 2 months or longer. My question is, what box setup do you folks winter in? 

Last year, my first year, I used two deeps and a medium full of honey on top. I wrapped the hives and used reduced entrances. 50% loss (one out of two), and the survivor came through very weak even though it went into winter strong. It wasn't lack of food, they had plenty of full frames left by spring. I think they were TOO wrapped, as it seemed very moist in both the survivor and the one that eventually died. 

Can you winter in a single deep in this weather?


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

deleted


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

AR1 said:


> I am in a cold climate, Northern Illinois. We often get week-long stretches of sub-zero F temps, and much longer sub-freezing with no temps warm enough to fly for 2 months or longer. My question is, what box setup do you folks winter in?


I have been wintering production hives in three deeps and have come the conclusion that is really over kill in about the same climate you have. I also winter five over five deep five frame nucs or sometimes five over five over five. In both production hives and nucs stacked three high the bees hardly eat anything at all from the top box generally and often nothing at all but nucs often need the third box in the fall to stop late season swarming.

My winter prep could not be easier. I put a mouse guard on the entrance and I turn the inner cover upside down so the slot in the rim is down. That is all I do. Winter losses the last three years have averaged 10%. Generally go into winter with eight production hives and 20 nucs. The winter losses I see are mainly from my very best producing hives or booming nucs the prior summer and I think are the result of too many mites when the colony shrinks down to wintering cluster size. I have not been using any fall mite control methods. Wash counts in late August generally run 1 to 2%. Some lower. A few years back we had an extraordinarily cold winter and my losses were normal. I do not see much condensation in the hives in March when I can first look in.

My neighbor runs my strain of bees and does August mite treatments. She wraps and puts a fiberglass quilt on top under the inner cover. She puts a mouse guard on the entrance. Her hives are very wet in early spring and her winter deaths run about 50%. Her hives are in full sun while mine are in the woods so partly shaded even in winter. Hers are partly protected from prevailing winds by two slopes ten feet tall on the north and west sides. Mine sit smack on the highest point around with no wind protection. Her hives are soppy wet in March.

I have run wintering hives with solid bottoms and with open screened bottoms and see zero survival difference. If anything there are less deaths in the open screened bottoms but numbers are too small to be sure this is real. The open screened bottom hives are much slower to move brooding into the bottom box in the spring and a week or so slower with spring build up but still do as well on the spring flow as those on solids.

I winter on either early season honey or sugar syrup. Neighbor winters on a mix of spring and fall honey. No real idea if this makes a difference or not. The market for golden rod honey is way too good to leave it for the bees. Golden rod out sells my spring honey by 1.5 to 1 and I run out of it way before the current years crop. This year I ran out of golden rod in March and was just selling out of spring when I harvested this years crop. Production of both was equal last year.

Is my way good? All bee keeping is local so my way may not work for you. My strain of bees is late to start spring brood rearing compared to commercial Italians. Some queens do not lay until almost April 1 some years like this year. Some start early March. That may or may not help. I do not know.

Dick


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Richard Cryberg said:


> Generally go into winter with eight production hives and 20 nucs. The winter losses I see are mainly from my very best producing hives or booming nucs the prior summer and I think are the result of too many mites when the colony shrinks down to wintering cluster size. I have not been using any fall mite control methods.


Any other mite controlls or are you TF?


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

My winter setup is two shallow boxes and insulation on top (5 cm urethan).

18 mm plywood 12 frames boxes (room for 13, good for air circulation), black tar paper around during winter

Bottom is open both ways, so again A LOT air circulation in the bottom, but roof is airtight


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

Juhani Lunden said:


> Any other mite controlls or are you TF?


Each hive or nuc gets on apivar strip in early spring on the first day warm enough to get in the hives to install the strip in the brood chamber between frames of brood or eggs. If a hive does not yet have eggs it is checked weekly, weather permitting, until it does have eggs and then it gets its one strip in the midst of the eggs or brood.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

it's interesting richard that you are having low losses despite skipping a fall treatment. i believe mike palmer also only treats once a year but i think his is in the fall.

juhani, richard went a few seasons (i think) without treatments with some success, but wasn't happy with the swarming and low honey yields so went back to 'conventional' methods.


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

squarepeg said:


> it's interesting richard that you are having low losses despite skipping a fall treatment. i believe mike palmer also only treats once a year but i think his is in the fall.
> 
> juhani, richard went a few seasons (i think) without treatments with some success, but wasn't happy with the swarming and low honey yields so went back to 'conventional' methods.


I think it is because I run MH queens. They really do a pretty fair job of keeping mite counts down. The trade off is they also are only moderate honey producers. No place close to as good at honey as the average Italian.

I ran three years TF. I was running local ferals I looked real hard to find. Our local feral population is very low. Some claim they do not even exist. But, I found three swarms I was sure were ferals. They were all unbelievably swarmy and not worth a hoot at controlling mite populations and loaded with DWV. Close to a miracle to get 30 pounds of honey per hive and averaged half that. I was only seeing about 35% give or take winter deaths on them TF. Partly because they were broodless a lot due to swarming. After three years TF I got an II MH queen, treated my ferals and started grafting queens and replacing all the feral queens. Took a whole summer to get the DWV level down to reasonable. That first summer my queens were all mated to my feral drones but I saw immediate improvement in swarming. Replaced all queens again the next summer with pure MH queens I raised. Saw very little DWV the second summer. Do not remember seeing a single bee with deformed wings this summer which is the fourth since I switched. Productivity is still coming up a bit I think. In the interum I have also bought eight open mated MH queens to make sure I keep sex allele diversity as my drones pretty much flood my mating area as near as I can tell. I no longer see any black workers and very few real dark drones these days in contrast to when I was running the ferals when I saw lots of both. I saw maybe one cordovan worker in twenty or thirty thousand when I had the ferals and have seen zero since switching to MH queens. One of the original queens must have been hetero corodovan. So, my ferals had a touch of domestic in them. Not surprising when there are probably 20 domestic hives or more for each feral hive in my county.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Richard Cryberg said:


> Each hive or nuc gets on apivar strip in early spring on the first day warm enough to get in the hives to install the strip in the brood chamber between frames of brood or eggs. If a hive does not yet have eggs it is checked weekly, weather permitting, until it does have eggs and then it gets its one strip in the midst of the eggs or brood.


I´m with squarepeg, I think it very interesting to have only a spring management.

My circumstances are similar to dicks, no ferals around, and really, NO ferals, so to go on being a tf beekeeper I may have to do such a management too.
I hope to be able to do without chemical treatments though. 

Having not such a cold climate it seems to be harder to have low mite counts in summer so to use swarm multiplying or other splitting techniques might help too.
No problem for me to have no production hives, if flow is good I get some surplus honey anyhow, not much, but sufficient if you don´t need it for your income.


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## drummerboy (Dec 11, 2015)

AR1 said:


> I am in a cold climate, Northern Illinois. We often get week-long stretches of sub-zero F temps, and much longer sub-freezing with no temps warm enough to fly for 2 months or longer. My question is, what box setup do you folks winter in?
> 
> Last year, my first year, I used two deeps and a medium full of honey on top. I wrapped the hives and used reduced entrances. 50% loss (one out of two), and the survivor came through very weak even though it went into winter strong. It wasn't lack of food, they had plenty of full frames left by spring. I think they were TOO wrapped, as it seemed very moist in both the survivor and the one that eventually died.
> 
> Can you winter in a single deep in this weather?


Do you have 'top' entrances on your over-wintered hives?

What preparations were made for 'your' winter?

YES, most anyone should be able to overwinter a colony in a 'Single Deep' or 2 Mediums, or 3 shallows....as long as they've got enough bees/stores.

Besides a few 4 frame DBL Nuc's, we 'try' to overwinter using a minimum of 3 mediums, sometimes as many as 5 (2-3 for brood, 1-2 honey) depending on the strength and size of the bee population at the time of our 'first' hard frost.....usually by mid September.

We tend not to 'Fall' feed until 'after' the first frost, and our honey has been removed. Sometimes the weaker colonies get to clean up supers, dependent on the colony.

All full sized colonies have a 'top' entrance (a notched inner cover) and a bottom entrance, reduced for winter.....and have an intended goal of 100 lb 'minimum' weight by mid-October, arrived at with their own honey or feeding thick syrup.

All colonies receive up to 5 lbs of dry sugar evenly spread out on top of the inner cover, which becomes hard by the time bees find it in early Spring, due to respiration.

We place an 'empty' Deep (used year round as a Vent/Feed box) placed over the inner cover/sugar and place at least 2" of Foam Board inside and cover with the tele cover.

We also place 1" Foam Board on the backs and sides of all overwintered colonies (usually by December), after giving bees enough time to propolize everything up.

Those that survive winter in good shape are 'split as soon as we begin seeing dandelions'.....and allowed to raise their own Queens.

We have used ALL MEDIUMS, and been TF since 2007....our losses have been less than 'average' (30% or less), last winter we lost just one  of 5. This year, so far, it looks like we'll have 9 full colonies and 4 (4 frame dbl) Nucs

Have witnessed no difference whether using SBB or Solid...so we're still using them both.

Hope this helps someone.....it works for us....here in Zone 3


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