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From: deelusbybeekeeper <deelusbybeekeeper@excelonline.com>
Hi to all on Biological Beekeeping at egroups: This is mostly a reply to Dave, but will have bearing on what the rest of you are doing: Please see interjections below:
Reply: This is true to some extent, but like all livestock of which bees are, it is not to be overdone.You coral a bull in a pasture, you do not mollycoddle it to death so it cannot do its job.
Reply: By selecting yourself, instead of breeding from survivors, you are defeating your own purpose and will never accomplish your goals by trying to select individual components and morphological features, to reput together in your own design. You are trying to play God and that will never work, because Nature breeds in a whole bee concept, it does not bred in parts and fragments. Until you are willing to let the bees select the fittest and most survivorable to go forward, you never will. Instead the opposite will occur and you will fade with your bees from what you want.
Reply: It takes about 3-5 years for an average USA commercial outfit to get there with a lot of hard work, longer the bigger the outfit is and shorter the smaller the outfit is. Even Barry, with his two now regressed has the seed frames to convert his remaining 8 colonies this coming year, so that in the following years his bees are stable. Others in contact with us have and are doing it also.That is bees kept with out treatments of any kind - chemicals hard or soft, to include oils and acids and antibiotics. That also includes foods fed to bees in emergency only, not because of economics of over robbing to their detriment. It also includes non restrictive confinement to their detriment, like trying to raise children locked in a bedroom and then providing for all their needs there. How would they end up any different than some beekeepers poor bees now? In the beginning it takes some manipulation, true, but even with us here in the USA, after the broodnest is stable and about three deep, we are rarely in it except once in the spring and once in the fall in the main gut. All we do is work the top 1/3 to keep it opened on top to keep the bees from hankering down, to thus keep them powering up for the punch to get the honey, etc.
Reply: Then we feel one is not a true biological beekeeper if crutches are needed. I feel true biological beekeeping is in line with traditional methodology of field management as kept prior to the late 1880s when the advent of drugs and chemicals started to obtain honey in its true pure state. Because this is the route we have taken with our own bees and the results have proven true, we hold a firm line on this issue. <I include "watered down" honey and "inbreeding" as some of our tools. Our knowledge base will grow and we will need to rely on these methods less and less over the next few years making beekeeping more pleasant and "user friendly".> Reply: It is only required as crutches
are required. Anytime you wish to throw them away your bees will
start to get better and will fast adapt to not being held down
artificially. When was the last time you practiced good outbreeding
techniques? & Time of season breeding in tune with the type
of bee you are trying so hard to save? & given them that
chance, by putting them back on old comb sizing as stated in
UK old archives by Cheshire, Wedmore, and Cowen? & then the
room to grow, to see what they really want to do? - rather than
what you want them to do? Reply: Is this not what we are looking for? What are you afraid of losing that Nature would dead end in evolution. Man's ill selected traits of what? <It could be that there are other traits in those susceptible strains that we should be nurturing but have not yet recognised.> Reply: In Nature you have working wholebee concepts, not fragements for survivalability. One does not save fragements to survive and win. It is a road to dead end evolution. Why do you like saving fragments, especially unrecognized ones? You sound like a person that likes to save everything, in case you may need it someday. Is this a sound practice in light of today's bee's problems. Why play at it unless one wants to. But this is not sound economics for our industry to follow. Sounds like treat and control and the control looking never stops, so you can solve the problem. <Your ideals are a wonderful aim...but let us fully analyse what we have available before we cut off some strains for ever.> Reply: Strains that are artficiallly created by man are not true strains and races in Nature. They will either stand on their own or they will not. If they stand on their own they will go on now in Nature for they were put together properly. If they will not stand and instead fall apart, then how good was the work done creating such weak strains and what good are they other than for job security and something to keep like a pet poodle to coddle?
Reply: This is true. I agree here. But you can at least try and play to win.The game of life is for keeps. Best regards to you both now and for the comning holidays and New Year! Dee A. Lusby |