# Considering drinking the Kool-aid



## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

I keep seeing posts saying that people have put hives side by side and treated one but not the other with the treated hive doing significantly better. Of course, I have seen posts where people say that if you don't treat your bees will die within 6 months and we all know that is not true at least not where I live. I think a lot of the people who are so against tf have never tried it or their location is more difficult than mine. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can place a hive where I live, do absolutely nothing to it other than take honey, and it will live for at least 3 years if not for 4 summers before it slowly peters out leaving stores behind. I'm sure that location plays a big part in this. No hive beetles, fire ants, or wax moths to speak of and no commercial agricultural. Good spring and fall flows. Anyway, curiosity has got the better of me and since OA vaporization doesn't seem to have any long lasting effect on the hive or its products I'm thinking of treating a couple to compare. Has anyone else tried this? Am I just setting back my apiary if I do treat two out of seven? I like not worrying about mites but if a few treatments a year will make my hives twice as productive, as some claim, I'm tempted. Am I just falling for all the treatment hype? Will I just be putting the OA vaporizer in the closet next to Jack LaLanges juice tiger never to be used again? Sometimes I wonder if treating isn't like the tanker trucks that stop dead on the highway to look both ways on the railroad tracks, by stopping on the highway they actually create a worse and more dangerous situation. Not sure, just tempted. Six of my hives are from swarms and cut outs (although a little meaner I prefer the ferals they seem to do better) and one is a package of Italians still with the original queen. Any thoughts?


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

it depends. the further south you are the more mites you can get away with. hives vary a lot. the shorter the winter brood break the more you can get away with, mites and the viruses that spread as a result shorten the life of winter bees. so the seasonal weather is a factor, [how long with little or no brood?]. there is little to no hard scientific evidence that there is a genetic answer yet. so it is up to your best guess [gamble] of what to do. none or almost none of us really want to treat. in my area without some sort of management there is high dead-out rate. what feral hives there are are summer swarms that will be dead by spring. a few may make it in village building walls, but not many. the loggers do not find active bee trees in the spring any more.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

that would be an interesting comparison but i'm not sure how meaningful it would be with the small number of hives and considering that there are many other variables at play. it may be just as informative to start with monitoring mite counts and see if there is any correlation to survival and productivity. the counts may provide direction as to when or if individual colonies may benefit from oav. if you are leaning toward keeping bees off treatments those colonies getting into trouble with mites could be requeened from your more resistant ones. 

high infestations in not so resistant colonies are more likely to take their toll at the end of the season during the fall brooding of overwintering bees. dead outs will make no honey the next season. a colony that survives an infestation and makes it through winter may end up so small as to not be productive for the next season. in these regards i could see how treating might result in more production. on the other hand if your colonies are surviving winter and building up to swarming strength anyway i'm not sure how they could be any more productive. my feeling is that you'll do more toward increasing your yields by controlling swarming.


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

Thanks for the insights everyone. I have been tf for five years and do swarm prevention although not always successful with swarm prevention. The hives I'm considering are the package bees and then a split from ferals that I absolutely love. I figure comparing the two splits would be the closest to an equal comparison. I'm not sure, like I said I enjoy not worrying about mites plus I'm not sure the wife will be happy with another bee purchase. A local commercial beek who runs between 700 and 800 hives is tf and has been doing this since the mid 70's. He says we are fortunate enough to live where tf is very possible. Maybe I should just leave well enough alone. I'm really glad you responded SP, I follow your tf thread and really like it. Thanks again all for responses, still not sure if I want to try it or not I just wanted to hear some other opinions.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Small numbers produce random results with little predictive power. The solution is a "repeated measures" trial. If you test the same condition in repeated years, over time you build up a robust dataset that has greater predictive certainty than an equal "N" in a single year. This requires a long-term commitment. 

I see two results in my TF trials -- 
1. Collapse in mid-summer to autumn (after drones are ejected). 
2. Chronic "dinkiness" --- a greater proportion of splits made off TF hives fail to build up.

Solomon Parker, in his sketchy 2015 reports, is demonstrating the #2 condition --- his splits failed, while his larger hives have whithered away to a count of 3 healthy hives.

I think #2 may be due to sub-acute virus loads in the fresh queens, or shortened lifespan in workers that drags the population expansion cycle below replacement.

The #2 condition is easy to test and check against -- the investment in smaller hives is lower, the numbers in the test can be larger, and the result is rapidly obtained. 

A single simple benchmark --- say "number of days from split to filling the 2nd box" or "count of brood frames" can be obtained in just a trial of a couple of months.

I am very much of in favor of folks making objective trials --- so much of TF promotion is filled with bluster, cant and rhetoric that the smoke completely obscures the reality.

The typical response of the TF salesmen is, "I'm too busy to measure". Huh? These folks want to jet around the country and preach to the wet-behind-the-ears guilible, and they haven't bothered to test their pet theories.


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## Eikel (Mar 12, 2014)

I've been chemical free for three years and have worked at increasing hygienic behaviors. However, I also try to be practical and judicious with my resources including bees and brood. My mite levels have remained within reasonable numbers except for a few hives this year. I don't feel I have adequate time this year to turn these hive around using my normal practices so I'm going to experiment with vaporizing OA. This is a limited application, I'm not abandoning attempts to improve on hygienic behavior but nor am I willing to waste resources while I try to figure things out.

I have no illusions or expectations regarding vast improvement in production but I do have a larger mite load than I feel acceptable, I do believe mites are extremely detrimental to survival/longevity of bees/colonies and I do have a tool that can help me knock mites back when one of the variables doesn't work or something gets out of control. With all that said, I'm going use another tool as I would use requeening, brood breaks; I just will not go to it as quickly. I guess I'm going to sip the Kool-Aid.


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

JW and Eikel thanks for the responses. I agree with what both of you said. I'm too small to ever do any meaningful trials or produce any super bee, I'm just "playing". I had thought I had my mind made up not to try it but after reading Eikel's response I'm not so sure now. This is a rebuilding year for me, I had three but lost two, one in the winter and one this spring. Both were three plus years old, one was weak and expected but the other seemed fine leaving plenty of stores behind but very few bees. I was told this was average for TF around here. I have seven now and I'm wondering if a knock down with OA in the fall could turn this 3 or 4 year lifespan around. I know that I don't want to treat with any of the "harsher" chemicals but from what I've read OA doesn't seem so bad. Still I'm torn, if I do treat then I feel like I failed but certainly felt like that this spring when I lost one unexpectedly.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

regarding the 3 or 4 year lifespan, the oa makes sense if you have determined that it is indeed mites responsible for it vs. something else, the law of averages on a colony failing to requeen itself for example. 

i have attributed three losses over the past five winters to mite infestation. these were characterized by profuse mite frass in the brood comb along with capped brood left behind that when uncapped and examined was obviously diseased.

queen failure (especially between october and march) has been my most common reason for losing a colony, and these failures may be an indirect consequence of having mites in the hive, however i don't find the frass and diseased brood in them.


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

I only noticed the frass in the one that died during late fall/early winter. Queen failure may be the reason for the unexpected one. They seemed ok when I did the first check of the year but a few weeks later dead with stores and no brood.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

sounds reasonable. one approach is to combine weak colonies in the fall but i find myself doing more combining in late winter/early spring. those two overwintered but tiny queenright colonies that i wrote about in my thread had fallen below critical mass and would likely not have produced, but they were just what was needed early in the season to provide good queens to queenless hives before we had drones flying and i got a good harvest from them.


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## Eikel (Mar 12, 2014)

I've had loses that I don't have the proverbial smoking gun; excessive mite frass, starvation, wet, etc. That's drove me to look harder at the Aug mite loads. I'm hoping by monitering Aug heavily I may be able to see the hives that are not hygienicly handing the mites and I can knock the count down before the winter bees are capped. If I can get these hive through winter I'll requeen from one of my more hygienic hives or one of the new hygienic stocks a local breeder overwinters near me. I'm still struggling with what the magic mite number should be.
The frustrating part is all the changing variables that skew the expected results. This spring/early summer has been one large cycle of 3-4 days of rain followed by 3-4 of dry; it really screwed up the foraging and spring flow. The bees are doing "OK" but pretty much living hand to mouth now, which is what I attribute to the increase in some of my mite counts. So I add another variable with the OA, nobody promised this would be easy did they?


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

"Still I'm torn, if I do treat then I feel like I failed but certainly felt like that this spring when I lost one unexpectedly."

In following the mite and bee cycle, I did not treat last year. This Spring when the colony almost die because of
the mites and bee disease, I managed to save them with 3 consecutive week of OAV. Then I made more queens to make splits out
of this hive. Don't be torn over the treat or no treat issue at this moment. If you don't help them then they will die. Now you know 
this one is a complete failure. When they are almost dead then you need to help
them along. You can only help them so much by giving them a resistant queen later on. A brood break does not help either because the free running mites can survive on the bees for 2-3 months while the hive population is declining everyday especially during the winter months. .
If you think that treating them is a failure then consider not having the bees the next Spring because the mites are here to stay whether or not we like it.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

beepro said:


> When they are almost dead then you need to help
> them along.


When bees are almost dead, that is the wrong time to try and save them. I will remind members that if you want to talk about treating hives, takes it to another forum. This whole thread should probably be moved to another forum.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

I think the thrust of your opening post was if you treat a couple of hives for mites, would they do better than the others.

At this point before you have tried it, the most likely answer is that if your hives are currently relatively unaffected by mites or hardly have any, then removing the few mites may not make much difference. But if your hives are being damaged by mites, then removing that pressure will help.

So the only real way to know in advance if the experiment is likely to yield positive results is a mite count. Sugar shakes and drop boards are not accurate in my opinion, an alcohol wash is the best way if you want a seriously useable result. If you discover the hives have a very low mite level then probably treating for mites won't do much.

There is not really a "safe" or "tolerable" level of mites in a hive, at least in terms of the hive's productivity. Every single mite in a hive represents one bee that has been fed on and infested with disease when it was a pupa so it emerges weakened and sometimes nothing more than a drain on the hive. So every single mite represents some small drain on the productivity of that hive.

There is a safe or tolerable mite level in terms of a hives survival though.

Also bear in mind that treatment results via oxalic acid can vary from good mite kills, to pretty poor.

EDIT - Sorry Barry, started writing this post before your one became visible. Will leave what I said though as you may move the thread, and my post is on topic.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

beepro said:


> When they are almost dead then you need to help
> them along.


During that time it was at the early Spring expansion when everything was blooming.
I only gave them the pollen sub. when natural pollen was plenty around. They were down
to 1.5 frame of bees and an after the solstice queen from last year. I would consider 1.5 frame of 
bees almost a dead hive. Now they're expanding into 4 nucs and growing into the Fall. There are some
mites in there. I don't want to repeat the same situation again this year. So I'm at the same thinking with the OP now. 
Maybe we should move this thread to a sub treatment forum.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

mcon672 said:


> A local commercial beek who runs between 700 and 800 hives is tf and has been doing this since the mid 70's. He says we are fortunate enough to live where tf is very possible.


that says a whole lot right there. 

when i first began contemplating the whole tf thing i reasoned that it would be a better use of resources to take a colony collapsing with mites, dequeen it, get rid of the mites, and then requeen from proven stock. this seemed like a more pragmatic way of culling the less desirable genetics without losing bees and risking the spread of the problem to nearby colonies. 

at that time there were some on the forum putting forth the view that these weakened colonies sometimes overcome the infestations and go on to survive and be productive. i'm not sure i've had an example of that yet because i haven't had any that have become overtly 'sick'. 

in the meantime i've learned how to make enough increase to more than recover from the less than 20% average winter losses and have been able to sell off surplus colonies. i've decided since that it would be more trouble than it is worth to try and 'save' a collapsing colony as described above and i've resolved to allow those that don't cut the mustard fall to the wayside. 

a couple of years ago i found a colony late in the fall that was queenright but had dwindled down to just a handful of bees. alcohol wash revealed a nearly 100% infestation rate so there was no doubt it was varroasis. i shook them out before realizing that i should have ethanized both the bees and the mites by putting them in the freezer to prevent drift into other hives. i haven't had that happen again since then but that's how i'll deal with it if i do.

my biggest concern when i was getting familiar with how some approach treatment free beekeeping and in particular utilizing the 'bond' method was that there was no consideration given for intervening in some way before a collapsing colony could be robbed out by nearby bees and thereby become a source for the spreading of a problem. i still feel that way.

fortunately the stock i am working with seems to have a low propensity for robbing as well as very little tolerance for 'would be' robbers trying to access the hive. perhaps this is part of their 'strategy' and adds to why we seem to not be bothered so much with mites here.

for what it's worth, i think the prospect of doubling your honey production by simply fogging the hives is pretty remote.


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

Thanks SP. So much conflicting advice from so many different sources. The local commercial beek says he let's the mites go no matter what. He said if the colony tolerates high mite loads he wants more of those bees, if they don't he didn't want them any way. But he is running 700 to 800 hives so he always has resources to split and recoup his losses. Then I have people telling me I'm crazy if I don't treat and how much better my hives would be doing if I did. When I see a lot of walkers or dfv I'm tempted. Sorry Barry if this is on the wrong forum, I just wanted to hear the opinions of the TF crowd. Old Timer thanks for the response. You are one of the ones who I always try to read their responses and posts. I will try alcohol wash opposed to sugar roll. On a side note, I was always interested in herpetology as a kid and particularly fascinated with the Tuatara. Do you have them where you live? 
JW, you mention colonies split from TF hives are dinks in your post. Are you able to turn the dinks around by requeening etc?


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

mcon672 said:


> But he is running 700 to 800 hives so he always has resources to split and recoup his losses. Then I have people telling me I'm crazy if I don't treat and how much better my hives would be doing if I did. When I see a lot of walkers or dfv I'm tempted.


Are you using the same bees as the commercial guy? Seems odd that some people (I presume in your area) are saying you got to treat, when this commercial guy is being successful not treating. If you are not already you should try to get the same bees as him, and beekeep the same way as him.

Which still doesn't answer the original question could they do even better if treated, but the commercial guy is out there trying to make a living so must have weighed all this up.



mcon672 said:


> On a side note, I was always interested in herpetology as a kid and particularly fascinated with the Tuatara. Do you have them where you live?


Yes a fascinating animal. Unfortunately they have now been exterminated on the mainland since humans arrived and introduced predators. They survive on a few islands but are extremely rare, they have been brought back from the brink of extinction by a captive breeding program plus habitat protection, but are still listed as very endangered.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Move this thread to http://www.beesource.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?241-Diseases-and-Pests
please.


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

a lot of success or lack of, is with treatment free has to do with the way you do things. there is an amish keeper near me who did not treat or add queens for over 10 years. he sold a lot of fairly weak medium nukes, kept mostly small colonies with most of the honey removed often. it seemed like a good plan with mite resistant bees. he had a customer waiting list.. pretty good deluxe treatment-free bees, for the buyers they often did fine for 1 winter and died late the second fall from mites, some died the first winter.. it was not the bees but the constant excessive splitting that allowed him to go 10 years without treatment, it works for him. the customers did not make out as well. word has gotten around some but he is still in business.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

"When I see a lot of walkers or dfv I'm tempted."

If you know that your bees are resistant then don't treat them. This is
a gamble on their ability to survive the winter or not. When this happened to me
last year all summer long I did not treat them. Then disaster struck in the early Spring.
Had I not intervene then this hive it is a goner for sure. Now I know they don't have the
resistant. So this year I do something different. Made small splits and requeened them all.
And so far they are surviving without the OAV treatment. Will keep on monitoring until the Fall to see their progress. 
I started with the resistant queen and right now is their 4th generation daughters
running the hive. Do they finally have the resistant or not?
Your hive now is 60-80% infested on the conservative side. If they have the resistant then they should
survive otherwise they will not into late October or before. I just take a look at the amount of crawlers on
every hatch cycle. If they are excessive then I know this hive is heavily infested. Without the adult bees
population exceeding the current dead bees then I know they will not survive for long. Remember that every
generation of young bees will support the next one.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

mathesonequip said:


> ...he sold a lot of fairly weak medium nukes, kept mostly small colonies with most of the honey removed often. it seemed like a good plan with mite resistant bees. he had a customer waiting list.. pretty good deluxe treatment-free bees, for the buyers they often did fine for 1 winter and died late the second fall from mites, some died the first winter...


This is major problem in these treatment free discussions. People say, that they are treatment free, but they do not tell how they manage their bees.

As a breeder, I do not count anyone to be treatment free if
- the treatment free period has not lasted for 5 years
- the beekeeper makes and sells nucs
- the beekeeper has made huge increase by making a lot of nucs with new equipment
- the beekeeper collects swarms

In each of these cases there is no proof that the beekeeper really has suitable bees for tf beekeeping. Suitable bees is crucial. Without them you are doomed to fail unless you follow the management practises (for instance making and selling nucs, or swarm collecting) of your tf idol.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

just what we needed juhani, another arbitrary definition of what is or isn't treatment free beekeeping, many thanks. 

i suppose you are referring to the practice splitting each and every colony every year so that along with the caught swarms all colonies are always in their 'first year'. i might agree with you that if that what it takes for the bees to survive off treatments and they are unable to thrive year after year without splitting then perhaps there's not so much resistance there.

but it doesn't have to be either/or. in my case i make up nucs by splitting the weak and nonproductive colonies and requeen them with grafts from the best colonies. the colonies not involved with making increase are not split and allowed to carry on for as many years as they are able. it's these long-lived colonies that i typically take my grafts from.

swarms are caught and used as needed for splits or to become production colonies. since there are very few managed bees in my immediate area it's most likely that these from feral survivors existing in the nearby woods. i'm happy to get them.

proof? suitable? all i can say is those of us working with these bees have not been disappointed. i regret that i do not comply with your standards and can not be counted by you to be treatment free, but then i've never really allowed myself to be defined by others anyway...

i'm a bit of a squarepeg in that regard you know.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

squarepeg said:


> but it doesn't have to be either/or.


Exactly. No need for new definitions. What I meant was that if for instance swarm collecting is the most important way to keep your apiary going, I would say this beekeeper is tf, but he needs to point out this method before selling bees.
If the beekeeper is selling nucs, there definitely is a border somewhere how many nucs you can make before this method becomes the major factor keeping the apiary going. We all make nucs, but by selling them we also get rid of mites.

Btw, I put the 5 year border just for you  ( 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, enough)


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood juhani. mike palmer has a good message regarding making up nucs by splitting up the poorly performing colonies and requeening from the better performing ones to sustain the apiary against winter losses. jwc cautions in another thread about the risks involved with collecting swarms in ahb prone areas. 

i agree with you and others about the need for honesty and disclosure when selling nucs and we are certainly all about that here. 

up until this year my bees were pretty good at splitting themselves with the majority of the colonies swarming in the spring. after playing around with walt wright's checkerboarding method i think i've come up with a modification that is more effective with these bees and was able to prevent most colonies from swarming. it will be interesting to see if that changes anything with regard to the fall mite loads and overwintering success.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

How do you modify Wright's checkerboarding?


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## dsegrest (May 15, 2014)

Unfortunately your control hive will probably have a very heavy infestation. The vaporization is supposed to kill all of the mites, but it appears as if a lot of them just move next door. In order to do a comparison, you would probably need to have the test hive and the control hive in different apiaries.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

AR Beekeeper said:


> How do you modify Wright's checkerboarding?


in a nutshell i set up the supers with alternating frames of honey and empty comb but instead of staggering the frames in a checkerboarded pattern i stacked honey over honey and empty comb over empty comb like this:

e h e h e h e h e 
e h e h e h e h e 
e h e h e h e h e 

where e = empty comb and h = honey, in three medium supers over a single deep set up this way in late february.

all but 2 colonies brooded up to the top of the top super and then moved back down to the deep without swarming. i plan to start a thread with more details once we get to the end of the season and the honey harvest is tallied, but i have already seen a big increase in harvestable honey and i got a whole lot more foundation drawn this year than in previous years.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

JWChesnut said:


> Solomon Parker, in his sketchy 2015 reports, is demonstrating the #2 condition --- his splits failed, while his larger hives have whithered away to a count of 3 healthy hives.
> 
> I think #2 may be due to sub-acute virus loads in the fresh queens, or shortened lifespan in workers that drags the population expansion cycle below replacement.


Or it could be a move from humid subtropical Arkansas to arid cold Colorado. The treaters can rarely understand changes in climate, I have found. I have also found that Mr. Chesnut's troubleshooting other people's bees over the internet is substantially biased.




JWChesnut said:


> These folks want to jet around the country and preach to the wet-behind-the-ears guilible, and they haven't bothered to test their pet theories.


Our exploits are greatly and purposefully overblown.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Welcome back, Solo!

Where have you been all summer long?
How's the bees doing?


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Solomon Parker said:


> The treaters can rarely understand changes in climate, I have found.


Where does that come from?

I would have thought a person could demonstrate their understanding of climate by knowing how to deal with it when they transition so they don't lose all their bees.


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## fieldsofnaturalhoney (Feb 29, 2012)

mcon672 said:


> I like not worrying about mites but if a few treatments a year will make my hives twice as productive, as some claim, I'm tempted. Am I just falling for all the treatment hype?


Sounds like you are..,Step away from the vaporizer (you've had enough second hand), & put the Kool-aid cup down, before its to late. Why jack up something that is already working for you, for the unknown?, in hopes of more production, that may or may not unfold? Once you cross the tracks, you & the bees may never come back :bus


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

To really truly solve this one we'd have to become immortal honeybees and go live with feral colonies, study how they manage, if they manage, and somehow return to the human world and relate that to our management practices. 

Work on a honeybee sized "drone" and I think we might just get there technologically.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

In part I think it's swarming and swarming and swarming and then having eager young queens in between and after who outlay the mites because the colony is always somewhat in establishment mode. Honey stores are built up during broodless periods, but perhaps not huge surpluses like humans like. 

Pretty confident that at some point someone will find the magic bullet. That person won't have two or four colonies in their backyard "breeding survivors".


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## mathesonequip (Jul 9, 2012)

good answer mr. carlson, you might add swarms from other than feral sources are a factor also.


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

It's funny this thread came back to life, I just took the plunge two days ago. I had a hive throwing a lot of walkers and some DWV so I did the first OAV treatment. The other 7 are fine just this one that was started from a package (2nd package ever ) this spring. The others originate from swarms. Guess I can't claim treatment free anymore. Feels kinda bad like a failure but this hive had to have something done to it or it would probably not make it. I've never seen walkers and DWV like this before. And yes, lots of mites were on the bottom board the next day. On a positive note the other hives are packing away the knotweed gaining weight daily. Haven't seen them on golden rod yet but they are all over the knotweed.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

mcon, you didn't fail but that colony most likely would have. nothing wrong with preempting the collapse and preventing the eventual rob out and spreading of those mites to your other hives. you can always replace the commercially produced genetics with some of your survivor stock. good move.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Solomon Parker said:


> Or it could be a move from humid subtropical Arkansas to arid cold Colorado. The treaters can rarely understand changes in climate, I have found.


In your case it is the non treater who is having big trouble understanding the climate.
Maybe it would help you if you spoke to some migratory beekeepers who set up in various climate 
zones multiple times every year and find out what they do to be successful.


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

squarepeg said:


> mcon, you didn't fail but that colony most likely would have. nothing wrong with preempting the collapse and preventing the eventual rob out and spreading of those mites to your other hives. you can always replace the commercially produced genetics with some of your survivor stock. good move.


Thanks for the comment SP and every one who replied. I agree, the hive in trouble will be getting a new queen from one of my other hives in the spring (if....).


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Forget about the tf bees for now. It is more
important to save this hive first to overwinter them.
You'll have plenty of time to give them a new tf queen once
you get them in the Spring time....if they can overwinter that is.
It wasn't your fault it was the mites. When one hive have them then
the others will. Don't forget to treat the other hive just to see the result.
I will not be surprised if they're infested also. So the question is how many?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

beepro said:


> Forget about the tf bees for now... When one hive have them then
> the others will. Don't forget to treat the other hive just to see the result.
> I will not be surprised if they're infested also. So the question is how many?


did you consult with beestudent on this one?

looks like the triadelphia area is heavily wooded and may be hosting a surviving feral population. without knowing the source of the caught swarms and if mcon has an interest in managing bees off treatments it could be counter productive to blindly treat all of the hives.

a more reasonable approach would be to suggest sampling by utilizing one of the methods for obtaining mite counts. the problem with that is that there are not any well established thresholds and resistant bees have been found to tolerate much higher infestation rates that nonresistant bees.

it's a trade off mcon. waiting until there are significant overt signs to apply treatments can sometimes be too late for a colony to recover and get a healthy overwintering population in place. on the other hand allowing the other colonies to demonstrate the ability to thrive off treatments may lead to some good stock to propagate from.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

beepro said:


> How's the bees doing?


As expected, if not more so.



Oldtimer said:


> I would have thought a person could demonstrate their understanding of climate by knowing how to deal with it when they transition so they don't lose all their bees.


And that's exactly why treaters don't understand. For you guys, every problem needs a treatment.



clyderoad said:


> In your case it is the non treater who is having big trouble understanding the climate.


Nope, I understand the climate just fine and am having the troubles I expected, though perhaps more than I expected. But I still have bees, and they are recovering.


clyderoad said:


> Maybe it would help you if you spoke to some migratory beekeepers who set up in various climate zones multiple times every year and find out what they do to be successful.


Why? They move their bees back to the exact same spots every year. That's not moving, that's migrating. I move, I don't migrate. They're also treaters, I am not. I am not in the habit of copying people who are doing something totally different to what I am doing.


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## jadebees (May 9, 2013)

My regimen, when I started "drinking the koolaid", was to use the essential oil treatments, mixed with syrup. At that time no one was sure why it worked. Research shows that wintergreen oil, and to a lesser extent, peppermint and spearmint disrupt the breeding cycle of mites, as well as kill them, if directly fed to brood, or with contact. It will kill a few bee larva also, but is reliable and natural. A few dead(6 or 8 removed) is a good indicator you have the strength about right. It can be used during honey flows, as it leaves no toxicity. Proper dosages are available online. This is what I use in spring and summer. In Autumn, it's the fluvarin-? strips. They are best for winter, and are safe, whether you believe it or not. Less toxic than essential oils. The real problem with a mite weakened/killed hive is the robbery will move 100's or 1000's of mites to healthy hives. And, it WILL be cleaned out. As colonies fail, mite levels explode in nearby hives. That is not coincidence.


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

I actually live about 1/2 hr away from Tridelphia. Where I live makes Tridelphia look like the big city. Mostly wooded in all directions,creeks in the valleys, power/right of way cuts and some pasture land. There is a good feral presence here. Numerous bee trees and plenty of swarms. I will say the only hive that got bad enough to treat was from a Georgia package the other seven are swarms or splits of swarms most of which I believe to have feral origins. The package hive was producing walkers and DWV big time. I have one I caught this year that I hope is from a local commercial guy who has been tf since the 70's, I put my trap in between two of his out yards and caught two swarms. I would love to have some of his genetics. I can see both sides of this whole treat/don't treat thing but I still think the long term solution is bees that are adapted to deal with varroa themselves. Now how do we get those bees? That's the million dollar question. I didn't help the effort any by treating for the first time the other day but I didn't want to lose a colony. Selfish I guess.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

jadebees said:


> In Autumn, it's the fluvarin-? strips. They are best for winter, and are safe, whether you believe it or not.


That's quite a statement! I believe the evidence, and the evidence shows it's not that safe and the mites become resistant to it.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Solomon Parker said:


> The treaters can rarely understand changes in climate, I have found.


A crazy statement. Re the demise of your bees, pretty obvious it was you who failed to understand changes in climate, and instead applied exactly the same methods in the new and very different climate as used in the old climate. For example stacking bee poor hives 4 and 5 empty boxes high so they got blown over in the much higher winds of the new climate. This and a whole heap of other mistakes is the reason the bees died and attempts to breed were a total failure. When I read how your bees were managed last season I felt so frustrated someone could just mechanically follow such unsuitable methods, be so out of sync with the bees, and then act disappointed when the whole thing bombed. I knew it was doomed before it even happened when I read what you were doing. I was frustrated because I wanted to just come over and sort the whole thing out properly. And it would not have involved treatment.

Claiming the whole thing is just a mystery that happens if you move is head in the sand stuff, commercial beekeepers move to new places all the time and thinking they can do this simply by treating, shows limited understanding about beekeeping. It's about understanding what bees need, what the particular climate does and does not provide or allow, and ensuring the bees situation is liveable and they have the means to be productive. There is far more involved in this than treating. 

It's real sad some people are so hung up about treating, it can stop them growing as a beekeeper. Your "bad luck" will no doubt continue, unless you happen to move to a location where the climate is forgiving enough to make up for the shortcomings and allow the bees to survive your rough, lazy methods.


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## biggraham610 (Jun 26, 2013)

Mcon, if you have hives that are effectively combating mites on their own, from local swarms and genetics, and you have one hive you bought as a package that is failing, why don't you do the obvious if you want to be treatment free? Let the package fail, and consider the drawn comb payment? I have one failing now, and I'm not flush with dozens of hives. But, I decided that was the best path to the place I want to be. I don't even want a package queen daughter, though, she would surely be better than the mother. I treated 2 times, 2 hives one time apiece. Over the last 3 years, none this year and do not plan to. I have VSH genetics open mated grandaughters running hives now. Plus some new Buckfasts I added this year. looking at the 2 side by side, as fast as that package built, there is no comparison, as far as mite control. I would suggest continue to add local genetics. I hope I don't ever have to buy another package, though, I am prepared to, but, after the 1st round of brood, the queen will no question be replaced. Good Luck. G


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

Well I'm thinking get it through to spring then pinch the queen and give them a cell from one of my other hives. To be honest the DWV kind of panicked me. I've seen it before but not like this. I started imagining this spreading from one hive to another and before you know it I'm back at square one. Also, for whatever reason, I never give up on a hive even when I know it's the right move. You wouldn't believe the amount of resources I dumped into a laying worker hive this summer to get it turned around. Enough to make two nucs lol!


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## biggraham610 (Jun 26, 2013)

I hear you. Maybe I just turned a corner. I'm not sure I ever knew it was the right move till now. Good Luck mcon. G


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## jadebees (May 9, 2013)

@ mcon672, my hives had a complete remission of DWV after starting amino acid & protein supplementing in early spring. Using common branched-chain amino acid from the healthfood store. And isolated protein. For what its worth, it was amazing. This was before essential oil dosing. It wasnt a large sample of hives but it may have made a difference. I use proteins only,and amino acids. Not brood patty.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

mcon672 said:


> Well I'm thinking get it through to spring


About that, I see your first post on it was around a month ago and at that time there was a DWV issue. So I'm assuming you treated them but how did that go and what state are the bees in now? Late in the season recovering from a bad DWV infection can take a while it is not a given they will make winter.


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

Thanks big g. Yea old-timer it's a crap shoot but I'm still going to try. There are still walkers and DWV but two more treatments to go. They are still very active like the other hives, we are in a good flow right now. I'll update in a few weeks. Thanks jade. Ive never tried eo's.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Why fix what isn't broken? If you can get 4 yrs out of a colony without treatments, that is sustainable. Yr 1 build up yr 2-3 honey production yr 4 split and re queen Once you get enough hives to stagger the splits, you should be able to cover any loss with the splits you make.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

mcon672 said:


> I actually live about 1/2 hr away from Tridelphia. Where I live makes Tridelphia look like the big city. Mostly wooded in all directions,creeks in the valleys, power/right of way cuts and some pasture land. There is a good feral presence here. Numerous bee trees and plenty of swarms.
> 
> I have one I caught this year that I hope is from a local commercial guy who has been tf since the 70's, I put my trap in between two of his out yards and caught two swarms.


that's awesome mcon. sounds like you are in an excellent location. if you have the time i would encourage you to consider adding queenrearing to your operation by grafting larvae from your best colonies. caught swarms are a good source for extra bees to make splits with. having a drone contribution like that is a huge blessing and you are in a good position to improve the gene pool by propagating and spreading out those genetics. i'm finding nuc production to be both enjoyable and profitable.


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## Gypsi (Mar 27, 2011)

Well I am considering the koolaid too. Probably the OAV koolaid if I try any. For now I am doing organic powdered sugar dustings to try to get the queens to stop laying for a week or 2, once they quit laying I think I can get oxalic acid at the hardware store and I have an extra battery, and a solar panel I use to charge it. Not sure what else I need but I know where to look. I only lost one hive last winter, my biggest vsh but they were sitting brood, 4 double sided frames of it when a hard freeze hit and I hadn't put the sticky in the sbb yet, lost a lot of bees to the freeze according to what I found, the balance didn't move up to get to more honey, died huddled and starving in the now empty bottom box. 

I am seeing the occasional mite on drone brood when I check so I have put stickies in and dusted with powdered sugar but knowing most of the mites are in the capped brood and I still have honey supers on hives as they are pulling in goldenrod I am not wild about treating at this moment. (I only dust the brood box with the sugar) Not sure I'm doing this right, have spent 4 years fighting drought this is my first contemplation of the mite war


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

squarepeg said:


> that's awesome mcon. sounds like you are in an excellent location. if you have the time i would encourage you to consider adding queenrearing to your operation by grafting larvae from your best colonies. caught swarms are a good source for extra bees to make splits with. having a drone contribution like that is a huge blessing and you are in a good position to improve the gene pool by propagating and spreading out those genetics. i'm finding nuc production to be both enjoyable and profitable.


Queen rearing is the next step for me. I've been reading and will continue to study over the winter. I'm not sure about the time, usually I only have weekends. Normally I work 8 to 8 m-f. Been off because of injury but should be back at it soon. Do you think a weekend warrior would be able to do it correctly?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

mcon672 said:


> Do you think a weekend warrior would be able to do it correctly?


sure. and perhaps some of the other methods for getting queen cells would be more appropriate than grafting. mike bush has some good info on alternative methods here:

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesafewgoodqueens.htm


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

Thanks


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## jadebees (May 9, 2013)

Mcon, an ordinary walk-away split, done on a Saturday, will be full of 7 day old queencells by Sunday the next weekend. It fits a workweek pretty well. If you don't get to it, all that happens is you have a new queenright split in 3 weeks, or a bit more. Learning how the splits timing works when requeening can be very useful. Sometimes I will remove/ trade a frame w cells into a new split. Or make a bad tempered hive queenless, and then give them an 8 day old cell. It saves a lot of time. There's lots of easy (lazy?) ways to get queen cells.


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## mcon672 (Mar 5, 2015)

I was thinking that too Jade. I have done splits, most of which were just walk aways. I do want to mess with grafting at some point, I find it really interesting. Time is what I usually lack between work, kids, a one man house remodel, other animals to take care of and a plethora of other hobbies. You know how it is. We'll see, plenty of time to think about it. What's everyone's thoughts on queen castles? Useful or unnecessary?


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

JWChesnut said:


> These folks want to jet around the country and preach to the wet-behind-the-ears guilible, and they haven't bothered to test their pet theories.





Solomon Parker said:


> The treaters can rarely understand changes in climate, I have found. I have also found that Mr. Chesnut's troubleshooting other people's bees over the internet is substantially biased.
> Our exploits are greatly and purposefully overblown.


Well it would seem that in this instance at least, "Mr. Chestnut's" prophecy is being fulfilled.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Not sure if I've commented in this thread before. 
Toyed with the idea of TF beekeeping all the way until I started seeing "crawlers". Bees with deformed limbs.
That was IT and I dove in and got me some kool-aide.
(several flavors  ) 
Downed it quick and learned all I could about treating bees pronto.
It was stressful and if I could go back I'd have simply not even considered TF beekeeping.
That's just me tho. Only lost 2 out of 26 this winter so must be doing something right.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

aunt betty said:


> Not sure if I've commented in this thread before.
> Toyed with the idea of TF beekeeping all the way until I started seeing "crawlers". Bees with deformed limbs.
> That was IT and I dove in and got me some kool-aide.


I have not seen 'crawlers' or signs of deformed wings in my hives, it's possible that those things *could* have been there and I just didn't see it because I didn't know what I was looking for. But, I treat for mites...usually...well, often...sometimes it hasn't happened, and I've lost hives.

I was taught that mites carry 11 of the viruses to which bees are susceptible, including DWV which seems to be particularly linked. It makes sense to me that if there are high mite populations, those mites feeding on the bees, and particularly the larvae, are directly injecting them with disease. Weakened immune systems, especially in the larvae being fed on by multiple mites in the cell, will be more easily overcome by the disease(s).

If it were simply the parasitism of the mites weakening the colony and reducing production, then I could see the thought of producing a strain of bees with tolerance to the presence of mites as a reasonable goal by itself. However, if mites actually carry and transmit viruses, then then the incidence of disease is likely to rise with the growth of the population of mites, and it is therefore imperative that the mite populations be kept in check by some means.

Any level of mites means that there is some level of disease present even if there are no visible signs of diseases. The rate at which mites and diseases (bacterial and viral) multiply (exponential, or nearly so) means that when signs of disease become visible it is nearly (or already) too late to do anything about it.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

March to the beat of your own drum, and if it ain't broken don't fix it.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

Harley Craig said:


> March to the beat of your own drum, and if it ain't broken don't fix it.


Quite so. If you are getting the results you want, and you are happy with the trade-off of time and effort to get those results, then nothing needs to be changed.

On the other hand, if you want *different* results, then something needs to be changed.

Insanity = Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.


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