# Of mites and colony mythology (and ailing Carnis)



## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I would find that high ratio of drones to be troubling. Could there be problems with queen fertility as well as the obvious mite issue. It appears you have a plan under way. Are there enough eggs and larvae to inspect for possible brood disease? I have a very sensitive spot in my mind now in regard to European foulbrood which will give similar fail to build late winter and dwindle to nothing.

I dont know if drones have better mite survivability than worker brood. Are there drones developing in worker sized cells? Bullet nose. Just thinking out loud that it would be good to know for certain that mites are the sole issue; I made some bad moves and wasted time from not properly identifying the real issue.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

yikes... so sorry to here this, but thankfull you are telling your story
Much respect to being willing to put down the mitebomb before it becomes a problem

However Here is an alt to euthanasia to alow you to save and re-queen the resources and make some lemonade 

Take the carnies and move them 5'
Place the queen with a comb of open brood in a new box at the old location no outher drawn comb... just foundation or IIRR in your case topbars... the field force has very little mites so it gets clean start and explosve swarm like growth.
however you have a mess on your hand so I would consider taking the next step of hitting it with OAD/OAV. and maby adding a bit of queen exculder to the entrance to keep the drones out... don't know how that will impact pollen colection tho....

The old hive in the new location is full of mites and queen less, give eggs larva from grape fruit and a few days later destroy all other cells, on day 10 later cut out and use as manny cells as you can making nucs , or not and just thin back to a few, day 20 hit it with OAD/OAV as it bloodless 
once you have a extra laying nuc pinch out the old queen at the old location... 
I might give an eye to having an extra grapfruit queen sitting in a nuc for the Italians for when you do a roll next mounth..

ya it takes a bit of unpalatable treatment... but down the road you have tripled or more your out put of great drones and laying queens increasing your positive selection and adding better geneticists to the area around you. The carnies hive has been "naturally selected" to die, no reason not to use it for a positive outcome as long as the queen is killed and the gentnics end.. Think of it like organ/tissue donation


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

I wonder if some shock therapy could be applied to the "doomed" hive.
Since there are "doomed" what is there to loose?
Take everything from them and do a fly back split?


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

Thanks for the replies.

Crofter: Hi. Although there is some capped brood, and quite a bit of drone, I'm thinking the queen is likely gone. Maybe she swarmed and her replacement died or was diseased. I saw a lot of nectar and pollen, but so little open brood today I'm not sure but that it wasn't some laying worker action. It may be she's mating, but she's doomed in that hive with as many mites as drones, and nearly no workers.

MSL: thanks for the kind wishes. If SP had not twisted my arm I might not have posted. I thought about various rescue efforts and soft bond. (Although treatment free, my first response to the 50 was to start researching "treatments which can be used during a flow". I was seriously looking at MAQS, to be honest. As they say: there are no atheists in a foxhole). When I think back over the last 3 years, I realize i loved this line because it survived, but in retrospect, it didn't do much else. Last year I was teaching myself biology by just letting them do whatever they wanted ("let bees be bees"), and they grew like crazy, created thousands of drones, swarmed twice, and then let the drones eat all the honey. I didn't mind, because they survived. But, this year I'm seeing that as more of a pathology. This line's tendency to create tons of drones and swarm in late flow is likely a mite's feast. I'm surprised they survived last year, and I bet I would have rolled a 15 last October if I had rolled then.

Greg: Hi. I thought about this, but other than "can survive heroic levels of mites" I don't see much value in these genetics. I might split or increase this summer, but will do it from the grapefruit swarm with some frozen and thawed comb. ("Frozen grapefruit lemonade?" I wonder what that's like?) I might get a splash of these Carni genetics back in some locally mated queens, but a splash might be all I want. I like the toughness, but not the swarminess.

Thanks for the feedback. I felt terrible for a week, and appreciate the kind comments.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i'm wondering about all of those drones. 

do you recall seeing a lot of drone brood in that hive leading up to now? 

i think it's possible that a lot of them may have originated from other hives. 

i say this because i moved a nuc from one yard to another a couple of weeks ago. within less than a minute of setting the nuc on the new spot, and before i even removed the screen from the entrance, there were a least a couple of dozen drones trying to get into the nuc.

if for some reason this colony wasn't being too selective about letting in drifting drones this might explain in part why you are seeing so many drones and mites.

i think the other posters have presented you with reasonable options. i'm pretty sure i would proceed with euthanization myself, but that's easy for me to say as i am sitting on a dozen colonies above and beyond my 'nominal' hive count at this time.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

looks like we crossed posts avatardad, you answered my question in your last. 

many thanks for sharing your experience with us, and best of luck to you going forward.


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

Hey SP,

Yes: although this year's queen was last year's daughter, they followed the same pattern. Incredibly dense and prolific worker brood in mid-January, huge nest through February, and then drones like crazy in mid-March. Last year, there were like 5 or 6 frames of drone brood. And then the swarm happens. This year was similar, but the numbers were a little lower at every stage. This line loves workers in January, and drones in April.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

that's interesting. i've not ever seen anything like that. 

sounds like a good strategy for the bees in terms of spreading their dna, but not at all desirable for the beekeeper looking to get a good honey crop.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

AvatarDad said:


> Hey SP,
> 
> Yes: although this year's queen was last year's daughter, they followed the same pattern. Incredibly dense and prolific worker brood in mid-January, huge nest through February, and then drones like crazy in mid-March. Last year, there were like 5 or 6 frames of drone brood. And then the swarm happens. This year was similar, but the numbers were a little lower at every stage. This line loves workers in January, and drones in April.


The carniolans are the same here, that´s why they did not survive my tf bond test management  not even the so-called resistant line which was not virus tolerant.

They are bred for gentleness and honey stores. Treaters say they are ridden with brood disease, need many treatments, often in vain and queen cell culling must be every week in spring. Drone frame culling is done too.
Could be they are bred to be very big hives before migration in may. This means early swarming too which must be prevented.
In a treaters schedule in may, after drone culling, the hives are almost mite free after OA in winter and then want to swarm, but they are highly mite infested, breeding the mites, in summer if swarming is prevented.
In fall migration they are doomed because treatments come after harvesting.

IMO they are managed so long as if there are no mites that they don´t recognize the danger and the trigger to the defense is much too high for them even if it is much lower than in my AMM or elgon hives.

I once thought the beekeepers move to Buckfast Bees because of more honey stores but now they tell me it´s because of more balance between brood and stores and because of more resistance and tolerance to mites and virus, probably because of breeding programs. Buckfast here seem to have less chalk and other brood disease.


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

Wow, Sibylle. I did not know any of this (except for what I discovered the hard way) and this is reassuring to me to eliminate this line from the yard. Your experience seems much the same as mine. Even during the good years I had trouble getting much of a crop because they spent all the extra calories on drones. And mites, I discovered.

I'm beginning to lean towards locally bred queens and some ferals if I can trap some. There are large undeveloped forests nearby, and I have some traps out.

Thanks!

Mike


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

AvatarDad, by chance are the Carni's on foundationless or in your topbar hive? Where is the queen putting all of these drone cells if they are not? Are you seeing normal worker brood in the combs? My topbar hives love to pull drone comb and fill up a hive in the spring with them. You know I am using the powdered sugar each month on each comb to knock down the mites into the DE that I keep on the bottom board. Even with all the drones in the hives that I allow, they are still not overrun with mites.

If you have a screened bottom on this said hive, you should give that a try weekly or twice a week for 2 weeks and then retest and see if you levels have not come down to a manageable level so you don't have to kill the hive.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

AvatarDad said:


> Wow, Sibylle. I did not know any of this (except for what I discovered the hard way) and this is reassuring to me to eliminate this line from the yard. Your experience seems much the same as mine. Even during the good years I had trouble getting much of a crop because they spent all the extra calories on drones. And mites, I discovered.
> 
> I'm beginning to lean towards locally bred queens and some ferals if I can trap some. There are large undeveloped forests nearby, and I have some traps out.
> 
> ...


Good idea. I plan to do IPM on the susceptibles in future, this will be Ruth´s powdered sugar management and probably the freezing of one or two brood combs before winter breeding is done.
I start this season to multiply from only the strongest.

But: it´s not the carniolans that breed drones in spring, the others do it too. Up to 50% this spring. Still they store honey so much they want to swarm!
There is some special mechanism working in my elgon/AMM line, to hold the mites at bay. I have to find out yet how to propagate this by managements or improvement of hive structure.

For example they expel a big part of the drone pupa in early spring of the first drone brood. 
But the carnis did that too.

The other races have + - 10% drones in the hives all the time until winter. As mite trap or, if you see mites as "friends", to provide the mites with an everlasting host? I did check and mites are double numbers in drone cells.
I had one carni hive which had no drone brood after throwing them out in summer. They crashed first.

This getting rid of drones is typically carniolan and IMO lets the mite numbers explode and migrate to worker brood.
So to cull drones in spring and drones expelled in summer means not much opportunity for mites going into drone brood and starts the mites going into worker brood much more which could prevent correlation.

With respect to mite downfall the elgons threshold is 30 a day,the AMM even higher and the carniolans was 5 a day or less. Then virus starts to be seen.

Otherwise: I have a co-worker who claims to be tf for 15 years using local carniolan mutts (mixed with buckfast) he is not isolated.
I will visit him in 10 days and learn his beekeeping ways. This I will post in my thread.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

There seems to be a lot of conjecture here that the Carniolan genetics are the cause of this virtual collapse; seems like quite a bit of recall of anecdotal events to support it.

I get very suspicious about the quality of conclusions reached this way. I suggest that if this conclusion were so easily supported in fact, it would have become common knowledge by now, and people doing _quality_ research on mite issues would be flocking _away_ from Carni influence. 

It sure would be nice to know what the actual chain of events are that lead up to Avatar's situation. It is all to easy to jump to a wrong conclusion which is a step _away_ from learning.

Easier said than done, though!


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

The best reseach is your own observations and if you are tf and do bond test you know very quickly what will survive and if you are a good observer and keep journal for 5 years you know what happens in your hives.
I purchased "resistant" carniolans, pure bredcolonies which showed no resistance, I purchased AMM colonies which had to adapt but the genetics survived, I purchased elgon genetics and see that they can be used, same with some of my co-workers.

Those three "lines" were in separate locations.
And now I will test purebred VSH buckfast. Seperate location.

I can´t find quality research to help me in my situation. So I need to rely on my own conclusions or treat with chemicals. 
My personal opinion is that in the end all beekeepers have to use their own experience and cannot rely on theories and statistics done by science or done in different locations or done too short a time or done with different managements on beekeeping. All have to develop their own local bee stock no matter what race, but better a surviving race.



> it would have become common knowledge by now, and people doing quality research on mite issues would be flocking away from Carni influence.


If they find a solution and produce mite resistant carniolans I would be glad, but right now the scientists admit to no resistance coming and search for more medication or mite reducing methods.

I europe everywhere the beekeepers went to carniolans the pest and disease came and the native bees which correlated with the mites after first impact went extinct except they were protected and kept away from imported races.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Just a few thoughts;

Strength of conviction is not an accurate indicator of veracity. 

A single persons confirmation bias is a very devious source of error; more eyes on a problem can ( and sometimes not ) help point it out.

"Group think" is another amazing source that can totally cripple objectivity.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

crofter said:


> Just a few thoughts;





> Strength of conviction is not an accurate indicator of veracity.


No, only concerning yourself, but I think the op knows that.



> A single persons confirmation bias is a very devious source of error; more eyes on a problem can ( and sometimes not ) help point it out.


It´s done in forums that´s what they are for. Everyone is posting his conviction. One can hope to get different opinions on a topic and clear your mind in discussion.



> "Group think" is another amazing source that can totally cripple objectivity.


If the group is an echo room. But not if there are discussions.
But I see no fault in speaking about experience.

Actually I learned the most from reading the "personal experience" threads here on forum. Much more than from articles.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

I thought Keufus found some Carni resistance. I'm a bit agnostic about subspecies in the world of bee movement anyway. My longest living hive is a shell of its former self this year (generations removed from a Hawaiian carni). Small cluster this spring and honey bound. I freed it up to see if can start taking off. However this line has other offshoots that are doing well this year. Sometimes the daughter just happens to mate with the wrong drones, or the wrong daughter is chosen. I don't think it is anything to panic about. I'm always a bit surprised at which colony does well over time. 

Reminds me of the time I went to get some hens, chose the biggest most vigorous chicks and ended up with mostly roosters. They tasted good


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

SiWolKe said:


> Actually I learned the most from reading the "personal experience" threads here on forum. Much more than from articles.


Somehow I don't find that surprising. I'm guessing that you learned the most from those 'personal experience' threads that conformed to your existing bias.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

beemandan


> Somehow I don't find that surprising. I'm guessing that you learned the most from those 'personal experience' threads that conformed to your existing bias.


This is actually what I do do. Of course I do some testing out and also try and see how it works for me. I am a firm believer in what I see, just not always why I come up with why I think I am seeing it.
Cheers
gww


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

gww said:


> This is actually what I do do.


If your opinions are so firmly fixed that you only accept those ideas that support them….then your closed mindedness will be your undoing. Just my opinion.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Beemandan
I am not so closed mind that when my eyes are seeing something not work that I don't reconize I need to make some kind of adjustment. If you start something that you have never did and there are lots of choices out there, you have to look at them and put your common sense to it and then pick one and then try and then see. You "might" know a little more after you see. Being so open minded that you never get to the point of even trying one thing would not move you too fast in any direction either.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

beemandan said:


> Somehow I don't find that surprising. I'm guessing that you learned the most from those 'personal experience' threads that conformed to your existing bias.


No. I often read the posts in the treaters forum. This confirms much of my thoughts staying on my path and staying tf or considering to integrate IPM. And I learned much practical beekeeping from MB, old-timer, enjambres, Lauri, fusion_power, squarepeg, Michael Palmer and others who keep bees in a different manner tf or not and give advise here.

Beemandan, it´s not about confirming bias if you have a goal. The goal will stay though. The path might change. I´m not understanding how beekeepers will stay in that treatment treadmill but it´s their choice. I understand about the fear of loss.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

gww said:


> Beemandan
> I am not so closed mind that when my eyes are seeing something not work that I don't reconize I need to make some kind of adjustment. If you start something that you have never did and there are lots of choices out there, you have to look at them and put your common sense to it and then pick one and then try and then see. You "might" know a little more after you see. Being so open minded that you never get to the point of even trying one thing would not move you too fast in any direction either.
> Cheers
> gww


:thumbsup:


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

SiWolKe said:


> This confirms much of my thoughts


In your own words.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

beemandan said:


> In your own words.


Haha, yes! I find the other approach not as attractive right now. Too much work with chemicals. I rather work with nature. And I´m not taking part in the race of who can demonstrate production success.
I´m just interested in the life of the honeybee.


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

crofter said:


> There seems to be a lot of conjecture here that the Carniolan genetics are the cause of this virtual collapse; seems like quite a bit of recall of anecdotal events to support it.


I don't intend to impugn the entire breed... just my particular queen (and maybe not even her). I know many colder weather beeks have great luck with them (see Mike Palmer and Sam Comfort), and I think my bees would do well in cold weather as well. They certainly seem to "read the season" well and brood up at exactly the right time, and on Feb 8th they were my only hive flying.

And they might perform better in a Lang hive on foundation than they are for me in a TBH totally foundationless. I think if it were gently suggested to them they build less drone comb, they might.

They brood up huge a month earlier than any of my other bees, and were easily my most productive hive in the early part of the flow. But, they raise more drones than any other 3 hives combined. This may be poor management on my part; I'm just starting to figure how to cull drone brood without breaking comb, and if I had done more of that earlier I might not be in this place now.

(Ruth: frames of drone brood where nest turns to honey, and in the middle of the honey. Anywhere they can find outside of the first 5 frames or so. So much I thought the queen had gone drone layer. It wasn't failure... it was her strategy).

Still, for me, mostly foundationless and in a very hot climate, these bees are always "turned up to eleven". They cause me a lot of labor, and pay me back with 2 swarms a year and nearly no honey, and mites. I would love if I had found a trick which enabled me to keep them healthy and productive. But if any blame is to be had, I place it firmly on me. As a clueless newbie beekeeper, they survived me for 2.5 years. (they are tougher than I am clueless, which is saying something). I just think they are too far gone now for me to save, except for the remaining drones giving a little DNA back to the queens I will raise in the next month.

I will definitely try Carnis again, but maybe when I'm a better beekeeper than I am today.

Mike


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## tpope (Mar 1, 2015)

Glad that you posted this AvatarDad. It gives me things to ponder over and take a different look at how I am and will manage my bees...

I have long said that keeping bees is kinda like playing chess with yourself. So now I gotta think out my next move...


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Avatar;

I think you raise some points that could well support a cause and affect genetic relationship in your particular situation. I have zero experience with top bar hives and little on foundationless. My experience is mainly with strongly carni type bees in foundation supplied Langs. I can certainly attest to my bees inclination to build lots of drone comb if given the foundationless opportunity. Lets suppose this is one contributor.

Have you ruled out the possibility that the queens fertility was waning (perhaps through disease) and she was producing an inordinate number of drones. I had this happen to me. There were even supercedure cells built containing drones! I suspect disease rather than poor mating. Had this occurred in the fall rather than mid summer I could easily have not found out till spring when they would have undoubtedly failed to brood up! Mite counts in my case were virtually zero though.

I would question whether the events in your case were the product of the queens "strategy" rather than the product of circumstances.

I played with cullling drone brood but was not happy; In a top bar hive that might be far more than an unhappy exercise. Yes they can quickly get the swarm urge. Since I switched to skewing the hive population demographics with the Snelgrove division boards it has made the swarming problem go away and seems to have cut down the drone production but the latter is only a hunch. I try not to deceive myself but I still do at times!

I have seen some very convoluted explanations put forth to try to substantiate preconceived notions. It is often very hard after the fact to establish a clear and factual chain of cause and effect but I think it is important. Having the right answer for the wrong reasons really doesn't cut it!

It sure would be nice to know whether that very productive queen had a fatal flaw or whether some other unidentified issue appears to give her a bad name. Perhaps those drones do have great value genetically.


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## robassett (Feb 26, 2018)

One of my colonies went from a 0 mite count end January to 10% two months later. During that time they were producing drones like mad (maybe 50% of brood by area), which I suspect had something to do with the super sharp mite ramp, but I really don't know, because that is less than three cycles of capped drones. The queen is a granddaughter of an Italian, don't think that matters. In the future, I will take steps to limit drones to 2-4 frames because they produced a ridiculous amount of drones when left to their own devices. My other hive had a similar trend, but went from 0.5% to 5% over the same time period. 

This rate of increase is too high to be through mite reproduction in just two months. There has to be some transfer between hives involved.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

Avatardad,
Please keep in mind that honeybees prefer to keep more drones around in their hive than we beekeepers think are necessary. If you want fewer drones, make sure to place the empty bars in the brood nest between drawn combs of worker brood. That will usually result in more worker brood. You can also employ vertical queen excluders in the topbar hive to keep the queen out of the honeycomb (or to sequester the drone comb behind the excluder for them to use as honeycomb once the drones have emerged.

I'd argue that a hive that has survived for 2.5 years is not one to do away with lightly. Their natural instinct is to produce a swarm (and in doing so achieve a brood break), so help them out by moving the queen over to a Lang nuc and watch that she doesn't revert back to what you are expecting. As for the big hive, let them build queen cells, thus achieving the brood break they need (and you might consider helping them out with the mite issue with the powdered sugar, if that isn't against your religion)

I have plenty of booming topbar hives that have laid 5-6 combs of drone brood. I pull each of their queens over to a nuc and let the bees fill up the empty drone comb with my main honey flow. Then I can get that comb out of the hive and the new queen will have worker comb to lay in when she is ready.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

ruthiesbees said:


> I have plenty of booming topbar hives that have laid 5-6 combs of drone brood. I pull each of their queens over to a nuc and let the bees fill up the empty drone comb with my main honey flow. Then I can get that comb out of the hive and the new queen will have worker comb to lay in when she is ready.


Ruth, I make small splits with queen for two years now imitating this you describe. Broodbrake of the queenless and having the foragers give me honey harvest and breaks the breeding cycle of mites.
I wonder if this is IPM or just an imitation of a natural behavior, as in swarming ( except the harvest).

I have 10% natural comb from cut out corners on my foundation, which is used for drones and later for honey. So I don´t cull. The empty frames with drone comb are at the outside and later after reduced drone breeding they are filled with honey too and I can use them for splits or to provide before winter.
The drone corners are used for drones throughout the year in changing numbers. I observed that they are used for drone breeding in mite stress situations before winter bee breeding in the survivor hives. I had a higher number of drones bred in autumn in this hives than in summer.


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## pgayle (Jan 27, 2008)

For what it's worth, I had a colony with very high sticky-board mite drop around 2010. I was new and "treatment free" so I did not do anything. Direct descendants from this colony are our best producers. I had given them quite a bit of foundationless frames back then, and they have a lot of drone comb. So, not only do we get a good honey crop from them, they are contributing good survival genetics to the local area. 

Now, "knowing better" I probably would have treated and requeened. 

Just out of curiosity I should do a sugar roll this spring.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

pgayle said:


> For what it's worth, I had a colony with very high sticky-board mite drop around 2010. I was new and "treatment free" so I did not do anything. Direct descendants from this colony are our best producers. I had given them quite a bit of foundationless frames back then, and they have a lot of drone comb. So, not only do we get a good honey crop from them, they are contributing good survival genetics to the local area.
> 
> Now, "knowing better" I probably would have treated and requeened.
> 
> Just out of curiosity I should do a sugar roll this spring.


I believe from a interview with Keufus that mite drops are not dependable indicators of mite populations. Variations in grooming and the fact that bees bring home mites makes it undependable. Seems the best indicators are mite washes plus brood assessments to do a proper assessment.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

the op reports using alcohol washes to determine infestation rate.

can you update date us on the status of the colony in question avatardad?


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> the op reports using alcohol washes to determine infestation rate.
> 
> can you update date us on the status of the colony in question avatardad?


Hello all,

Yes: I used an alcohol wash using best practices. the only variation I made on the standard procedure is the bees soaked in the alcohol about 10 minutes before the shake and strain. (I took a sample at the hive, dumped them into the alcohol jar, did a little maintenance and closed up, and walked up to the house to do the wash). I used a microscope to confirm I was seeing mites and not something else. Mites covered the bottom of the jar.

When I went back in on the sad day 3 or 4 days later, the hive was even more depopulated. There were open queen cells but no sign of eggs or larva, and a very low population of workers and even drones... the hive was nearly empty. (About a two comb's worth of bees spread over 10 combs). I'm thinking a virgin queen got eaten by the cardinal who hangs out near the hive. there was a clump of workers on the front of the hive, even though the hive was very empty.

I've never been stung in 3 years of beekeeping, but on this day I got about 10 on my hands (heavy work gloves... the first 15 or 20 stings didn't get through, but the next 10 did). The honey which was in good shape i froze and will give back to other hives during a dearth. Some of the nectar was already infested with SHB and was beginning to smell of mead. Although that might have been savable, I was not feeling in the mood to risk it. All that comb got melted down.

So, that's it. I feel this was a growing experience for me as a beekeeper, even though I felt like a murdering failure the whole time it was going on. Killing a sick hive is not easy or fun, but I figure it is part of the job description. I caught another swarm about the same time (definitely different bees... much lighter in color, healthier in aspect, and nicer in disposition), so I'm still at 4 colonies. I'm a firm believer in mite washes now. And swarms: catching more swarms is my new mission. They are my most productive, healthiest hives.

Thanks!
Mike


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

robassett said:


> This rate of increase is too high to be through mite reproduction in just two months. There has to be some transfer between hives involved.


Actually it doesn't have to be related to drift, it's quite possibly related to timing of the counts. I started doing some modelling of colonies coming out of our winters, and overlaid the mite life cycle on top of the bee life cycle to get a better understanding of the process. Using numbers relevant to my climate, this is what i discovered.

Our bees start brooding in mid February. If we assume 50 mites in the colony at the start of brooding, then as the first capping cycle starts, pretty much all of the mites will migrate into a cell. When the first hatch begins then, those 50 mite will become 100. Mites stay phoretic for an average of 4.5 days (from literature), so those 100 mites will start heading into cells 5 days later (round numbers). The mite population growth initially will be more or less in sync with the bee population cycles as the constricted size of the early brood nest doesn't give opportunity to get into cells right away. So most of those hundred mites will go into cells during the capping phase of the second brood round which is beginning in the second week of March (March 7 to 14 roughly), but capping starting around mid March. So here was my aha moment on this when I worked up the math on it all. We used to do a first mite count around April 1 timeframe, and always got extremely low number. BUT, when you work out the math on the bee and mite life cycle, it suddenly makes sense, in that timeframe the VAST majority of the mites will actually be under cappings. It's not till the third round of bee brood that the mite growth cycle can 'unhinge' from the bee growth cycle because there is starting to be enough brood in all phases that the mites always have a place to find an appropriate aged larvae to go into.

Where this leads, my April 1 count is skewed because with a count of 50 mites in the colony at start of brooding, there are now around a hundred mites reproducing under cappings and virtually no phoretic mites. But, a little over a week later we get 200 mites emerging with the second round of bees. At the same time, the bees are starting to raise a considerable number of drones, so those 200 end up targetting drone cells and will turn into 600 over the first reproduction cycle in drone brood. It's only at that point when this round emerges that the mites and bees are able to run completely independant brood cycles. Prior to the first round of drones emerging, an alcohol wash or sugar roll count will be skewed significantly by the timing of when you actually do it. You can see a count of 0 one day, then a high count only a few days later due to emergence cycles.

The effect of cycle timing and co-incidence between bee and mite life cycles disappears completely by the 3rd round of bee brood for a large colony, 4th round for a smaller start, because the brood nest will be full size, ie, larvae in all stages of both worker and drone brood at all times, so mites are no longer forced to wait on bee brood of the appropriate age to enter a cell.

If you want a reliable early season count, it needs to be taken the day before they begin capping the second round of bee brood. Take it a week later, and you will almost certainly get a zero count, even from a fairly infested colony. The mite brooding cycle will stay in phase with the bee brooding cycle until the brood nest is large enough that there is open larvae in all stages from egg to capping all the time. Once the bee brood nest reaches that state, then it takes another couple of weeks before a sample from the brood nest will give a reliable number on any given day.

Yes, it is possible in the early season to do a count, get zero, then do another count just a week or two later and get a sky high number without any incoming mite drift. It's actually highly likely until the brood nest is sufficiently large that the mite reproduction cycle and bee reproduction cycle can get out of phase with each other.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Well said, grozzie2.
Same with counting mites on boards. Plus, those can be groomed off or dying mother mites. No use without microskoping.
A wash or shake only makes sense with mostly open brood.


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

grozzie2 said:


> Actually it doesn't have to be related to drift, it's quite possibly related to timing of the counts.


I agree. Or it could be other sampling artifacts. In an earlier post I mentioned how my hive had a 50-60 count on my first sample which was very drone heavy, and had about a 25 on a second sample more carefully taken from the middle of what nurse bees I could find 3 days later. Both of those are terrible results, but both were also done using very good procedure with only one variable changed (sample location within the hive). I could easily see some slight sampling error turning a 2 into a 0 at one point, and turning an 8 into a 10 at another.

Maybe the takeaway is "mites can grow dramatically in a short time". We've likely all seen Randy Oliver's graph which says exactly that. I'll sample every hive 4 times a year from now on, at a minimum. We cannot just sample in February, get a "1" and call it good, was what I took away from robassett's story. We cannot just assume "if they survive they are fine" is the lesson I learned from my own.

Mike


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

good thread, thanks for sharing mike and thanks to the other contributors for participating.

i was wondering how you accomplished the euthanization, freezing?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

AvatarDad said:


> We cannot just assume "if they survive they are fine" is the lesson I learned from my own.


:thumbsup:
Very true and to the point I Have bee hitting on lately, just because they survived doesn't mean they are breeding stock... Imagine the results if they had been split hard so the mite issue is deferred till next year (or more splits in 2019 and deferred till 2020) then suddenly. a whole yard of problems...

Mike I would like to commend you for posting this thread and not taking the "I will wait and see if they make it, maby they have some special tolerance to high mite levels" attitude of the past.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

msl said:


> Very true and to the point I Have bee hitting on lately, just because they survived doesn't mean they are breeding stock... Imagine the results if they had been split hard so the mite issue is deferred till next year (or more splits in 2019 and deferred till 2020) then suddenly. a whole yard of problems...


Yes, that´s true.
As long as you are expanding to higher colony numbers it´s hard to evaluate the stock for breeding.

It´s good to even out the colonies strengh by splitting all in the same way. 
Next spring you will see a difference, but not always, because much depends on the queen`s mating. It´s not all about mites but you need experience to find out.

The surviving queens with the strongest colony going into spring is best to breed from. 
Even better if she survived two winters and still is strong in spring.

If numbers of colony allow breeding this should be done by using the best descendants and treat the others or use them for honey production ( non chemical or other).

In my case only this queens have brood and bee numbers enough to multiply so this problem eliminates itself.

The dinks will get a new queen in summer.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

I have concentrated with queen rearing with 2 winter survivors with help from promising 1 winter survivors. This winter I get to raise queens from only strong 2 winter survivors. Good thing as it seems I'm a poor judge of what's promising. I am a bit thrilled to place queen cells from not only a strong 2 winter survivor but a good producer today. She really didn't stand out until later in the season last summer as an overwintered nuc. Some bees, like some hockey players are all flash, but don't produce so well. I have 3 winter survivors that are ok that have never been split and a 4 winter survivor that was strong until this spring. I am spatially concentrated with 2 bee sites close by for the first time. This is where my queen mating flights will take place this year. 

I view the preemptive euthanization as not harmful (actually could be if not completely obvious), but hardly necessary to the system. Nobody is doing mite washes on feral bees. Its why bond is ultimately a stable and simple system that anyone can follow. If somebody wants to do mite counts and make decisions on them, go for it. Maybe even profits can be improved if one can take all the honey. Maybe in some totally dysfunctional systems its useful. But it isn't a central idea in fixing system dysfunction (ie. the lack of regulation). I will be doing mite washes and brood assessments later this year and going forward doing some selection based on this. But this is market driven really as we don't really know optimal parameters for healthy systems that produce honey.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Leroy,
are your survivors surviving colonies or long lived queens?
I have 2 year surviving queens and 4 years surviving colonies.

And yes, total control of mites is not possible. You can monitor all you want, ( treat all you want too), fall can change everything, neighbor beekeepers coming back from migration with infested hives, your own bees stressed because of different parameters. So it´s bond test over winter for all.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

SiWolKe said:


> The surviving queens with the strongest colony going into spring is best to breed from.
> Even better if she survived two winters and still is strong in spring.


The math does not bear this out. Again, everything is climate dependant, so I'm using the examples of our climate where the bees start to brood up around Feb 15, then start brooding down between Aug 15 and Sept 15, some variation colony to colony. But we have to work with overall averages, every colony will have some variation from average. I was watching a presentation by Jamie Ellis earlier this year on youtube, and he made a reference I found fascinating. His comment was 'A queen bee will lay half a million eggs in her lifetime'. I was curious, is that an 'off the cuff' comment to imply a LOT of eggs, or, is it a measured result taken from literature, so I emailed him to ask, expecting to get a response in a week or two if I was lucky, was about 9am here when I did that. By 930 the response was in my inbox, and said it's a number from literature, not an off the cuff comment. So I added another tidbit to my model to count eggs laid by a given queen.

So now take the example of a 3 frame split made on June 1 with a fresh queen, which grows out to a full size brood nest at a queen egg rate of aproximately 1500 eggs a day, ie, a 'good queen'. By the time that colony heads into winter it'll have approximately 30,000 bees in the winter cluster and the queen laid 160,000 eggs, so we are putting a box with 10 frames of bees to bed in October. The following season, start of brooding around Feb 15 with a cluster that still covers 5 frames (typical around here), colony can reach honey gathering strength around April 15, full strength by June 1, and will head into winter again as approximately 10 frames of bees, queen lays 320,000 eggs in the process.

So, in spring number 2 for that queen, she's already put 480,000 eggs into cells. This may be the best genetics in the apiary, but, the queen is approaching 'used up', and likely wont produce a stellar brood nest in the early spring of year 3.

These numbers bear out in my experience. I have my 'number 1' breeder for this season. The history for her goes like this. She was open mated in our yard in June of 2016, placed in a colony during July then went up to our fireweed yard. That colony produced a stellar honey crop in the fireweed yard. For 2017 she spent the entire season in the home yard, and again that colony produced a stellar honey crop thru the spring flow. In August of last year I moved her out of the colony during late season requeening, put her in a 5 frame nuc. This spring, it did ok, but, it's currently in a 5 over 5 configuration, and they are not up to swarming strength. Conversly, on another stand I have a colony headed by her daughter. Daughter was open mated in this yard in a mating nuc in July last year, placed in the colony early August in time to build up the winter brood nest. This spring that colony looked absolutely dismal on the first round of opening lids and putting on spring patties, they only had bees in 3 seams on Feb 12. They wintered in a medium over deep configuration, so that was bees on 3 medium frames, what we consider a poor spring cluster on the verge of being a write-off. On the April 15 inspection they had bees in 11 seams. Our flow started on April 18 based on data from my scale hive. On April 22 they got a honey super over the excluder, by April 29 had bees in 18 seams. May 5 they got two more supers and on May 13 there were bees in 50 seams. On May 16 I dug down to the bottom box to find a frame of larvae for grafting, counted bees in 55 seams. Today, they have 5 supers on, 4 of them are being capped and bees fill every seam in every box, plus they have a pollen trap in place.

Our methodology here is designed for consistency. I have inspection sheets that come out to the yard on a clipboard every time we open colonies. Any time I look into boxes, we start by counting seams of bees then record the numbers. We track when supers go on, and weigh them coming off. What we have learned from doing it this way, once you get into the rhythm of keeping the records, it's not much of a burden. Write down how many seams of bees, and when we do dig deeper into the colonies, write down a count of frames with brood and those with pollen. There is a tick box to be ticked off if the colony stung me, another for 'saw queen, and another for if she was marked so we know she has not been superceeded.

Consistent records is a concept I took from a presentation by Michael Palmer and how he used them last year. What we have learned from the exercise, it's amazing how much our memory fools us at times, but recorded data holds the true story. When we did our first hive check this spring, one of them looked spectacular, bees on all 10 frames in the top box, my wife commented as we put in the first patty, I know who gets to be the queen mother this year, I agreed with her. On April 15 they had bees in 14 seams and were barely touching the honey super by May 13. They looked fabulous in February, by never really took off. Looking back to the history, they were requeened last May and thru last year were a little below average all season but went into winter with a good size cluster and good stores. The point is, that first spring inspection really left an impression, and if we didn't have recorded numbers, we would be very biased thinking that was one of our best colonies, and the afore mentioned stellar colony would not be considered 'best'. Our memory fools us constantly on such things, see one spectacular thing and forever forward you suffer 'observational bias' toward that colony.

My criteria for choosing where I graft from is fairly basic, and comes entirely from the records. A colony that meets a few conditions gets chosen. It must have produced a stellar crop of honey on either the spring or fireweed flow. Never been stung during an inspection, and never made swarm cells. From our perspective, everything else is 'just noise', these are the only criteria that matter to us. Bees that don't attack us are nice. Bees that dont make a good honey crop have no value to us, and swarmy bees have little value. I really like the colony that is capping in 4 supers, bees in 6 boxes and have not made any swarm cells. If I could have 2 dozen colonies like that we'll have a more productive apiary than somebody with 50 colonies of bees that attack you when opening hives and swarm every spring. This is my long term goal, bees that dont swarm, do make honey, and dont attack us when we are working in the back lot tending garlic and vegetable patches where the hives are sitting. Still working on ridding us of a couple lines that go into attack mode when my wife is planting her tomatoes in the vegetable patches in front of the hive stands. 4 stands have hives that dont attack, one has hives that come out with a vengeance, but they get new queens in a couple weeks once the cells in the mating nucs are mated and laying.


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> good thread, thanks for sharing mike and thanks to the other contributors for participating.
> 
> i was wondering how you accomplished the euthanization, freezing?


Shake into a 5 gallon bucket of soapy water, then freeze the mostly empty combs in a nuc box. They very quickly caught on to my plan and let me know they were unhappy with it.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

AvatarDad said:


> They very quickly caught on to my plan and let me know they were unhappy with it.


that made me laugh but i know it's not funny. were there many escapees?

so far winter has been an effective euthanizer for me. i think i've already mentioned the one varroa collapse last year that happened in the fall and bombed my outyard. 

the plan is to get robber screens installed at the outyards and be more preemptive if it comes to that again.


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

lharder said:


> I view the preemptive euthanization as not harmful (actually could be if not completely obvious), but hardly necessary to the system. Nobody is doing mite washes on feral bees. Its why bond is ultimately a stable and simple system that anyone can follow.


I agree with everything in your post, and am an "Evolutionist" myself... I believe strongly that we (beekeepers and humans in general) are holding back progress by keeping sick bees alive and not allowing weak bees to die.

That being said, I could not ethically stand by and watch my hive with 10 combs of honey in it, protected by 2 combs of bees, wither and get robbed. When I did the mite count, it was still full of drones and capped drone brood, and obviously had thousands of virulent mites in it (likely more mites than bees). I felt robbing must only be days away.

I have 3 happy and healthy hives in my yard, and uncounted feral bees in the woods around my house. My best hive this year is last year's puny swarm, and a swarm I caught this year is just gigantic and powerful. 

I felt sure these bees would die one way or the other, and based on their 2.5 year record I decided I no longer wanted their genetics. I had to euthanize them in a way which protected the bees in the yard and the others in the trees. Allowing "nature to take its course" wasn't fast or safe enough for me; I felt I had to help her along in this case.


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

squarepeg said:


> that made me laugh but i know it's not funny. were there many escapees?


the hive was still trying to function. I closed up the entrance, and the following morning there was a softball sized cluster of returned foragers trying to get into the closed hive. That day it rained hard all day, and they were gone next time I checked.

It is ok to laugh. Next time I do this, I'm double-gloving.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i think it would have been a 'cleaner' kill if you would have left the hive open perhaps with just a frame or two inside and dispatched the returning bees the next day.

i agree with the case you laid out in your response to lharder, and i think your actions demonstrate a respectable degree of responsibility so far as taking appropriate steps to not let the treatment free approach put other nearby colonies at risk.

good job mike.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

perhaps drenching them with sugar water first so they couldn't fly?


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

AvatarDad said:


> I agree with everything in your post, and am an "Evolutionist" myself... I believe strongly that we (beekeepers and humans in general) are holding back progress by keeping sick bees alive and not allowing weak bees to die.
> 
> That being said, I could not ethically stand by and watch my hive with 10 combs of honey in it, protected by 2 combs of bees, wither and get robbed. When I did the mite count, it was still full of drones and capped drone brood, and obviously had thousands of virulent mites in it (likely more mites than bees). I felt robbing must only be days away.
> 
> ...


I have no issue with what you did. But if you didn't notice for some reason, it wouldn't have been the end of the world. Maybe you would have occurred more losses, but the lemonade from that scenario is some tough bees. I understand with 4 hives why you wouldn't do so, but strong occasional selection pressure does serve a regulatory purpose in systems in general. 

Ontario beekeepers recently reported large losses coming out of winter. But the bees that survived and did well in that situation will probably not be systematically propagated on a large scale. Spring splits will probably be done with imported unselected queens setting themselves up for the same scenario. The already occurred the losses, the trouble is not seeing the opportunity in that situation.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

lharder said:


> Ontario beekeepers recently reported large losses coming out of winter. But the bees that survived and did well in that situation will probably not be systematically propagated on a large scale. Spring splits will probably be done with imported unselected queens setting themselves up for the same scenario. The already occurred the losses, the trouble is not seeing the opportunity in that situation.


are there no voices campaigning for the alternative?


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

squarepeg said:


> are there no voices campaigning for the alternative?


I'm across the country so I can't say. But this is typical beekeeper practice. Around here anyway.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

SiWolKe said:


> Leroy,
> are your survivors surviving colonies or long lived queens?
> I have 2 year surviving queens and 4 years surviving colonies.
> 
> And yes, total control of mites is not possible. You can monitor all you want, ( treat all you want too), fall can change everything, neighbor beekeepers coming back from migration with infested hives, your own bees stressed because of different parameters. So it´s bond test over winter for all.


I don't know how long the queens last but the longest living hives I'm guessing have been superceded at least once. But I like bees that know how to supercede and not go into winter with a queen at the end of her life. So if I have a long standing productive hive, then I'm assuming they know how to keep things doing. I'm supposed to start marking queens this year so wish me luck in not squishing them.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

grozzie2 said:


> The math does not bear this out. Again, everything is climate dependant, so I'm using the examples of our climate where the bees start to brood up around Feb 15, then start brooding down between Aug 15 and Sept 15, some variation colony to colony. But we have to work with overall averages, every colony will have some variation from average. I was watching a presentation by Jamie Ellis earlier this year on youtube, and he made a reference I found fascinating. His comment was 'A queen bee will lay half a million eggs in her lifetime'. I was curious, is that an 'off the cuff' comment to imply a LOT of eggs, or, is it a measured result taken from literature, so I emailed him to ask, expecting to get a response in a week or two if I was lucky, was about 9am here when I did that. By 930 the response was in my inbox, and said it's a number from literature, not an off the cuff comment. So I added another tidbit to my model to count eggs laid by a given queen.
> 
> So now take the example of a 3 frame split made on June 1 with a fresh queen, which grows out to a full size brood nest at a queen egg rate of aproximately 1500 eggs a day, ie, a 'good queen'. By the time that colony heads into winter it'll have approximately 30,000 bees in the winter cluster and the queen laid 160,000 eggs, so we are putting a box with 10 frames of bees to bed in October. The following season, start of brooding around Feb 15 with a cluster that still covers 5 frames (typical around here), colony can reach honey gathering strength around April 15, full strength by June 1, and will head into winter again as approximately 10 frames of bees, queen lays 320,000 eggs in the process.
> 
> ...


A good common sense approach. Global values (survival, honey production, gentleness, and frugalness are most important).


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Wonderful comments here.

Mike,
when I was new I euthanized a hive with paralyze virus, out of pity mostly and because I did not want the survivors to drift to the others. Sulfured them. It was hard.

Grozzie2 
I understand your approach but my criteria differs. 
It´s simple: I take the same notes like you but if the colony survives two winters treatment free here, it is a breeder. Even with splitting. That because of my locale.
The other traits be watched too but resistance and tolerance to mites it first choice.
I have a queen which is a little too hot to my taste but she is productive ( honey brood). Made a daughter, let´s see what happens. Could be I change my attitude.

Leroy,
good answer. I yet have to see the difference between "colony" and "queen". The super organism is what you describe and which works. This is to be considered when managements are done.
I wish you luck with marking. Mine are not marked. I take a pict of each one but they now start to look the same so it´s getting harder. Will mark in future perhaps.


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