From: Erik Osterlund <honeybee@elgon.se>
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 16:52:27 +0100
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@egroups.com
Subject: Re:girls on small cells, regressing bees

Hi Dave and all

............
>If these things happen then we will be able to withdraw the chemical
>support.

Even before you have succeded in regressed your bees back to 4.8-4.9 I'm
convinced after experiments and observations of others that it is possible
to withdraw at once, if you instead use a setup of mangament methods

1. If you withdraw completely your bees keep a higher level of their own
resistance to secondary diseases. Chemicals put stress on the bees and
lower their immunesystem. Marta Gillam is one scientist saying this. i have
seen it in our tests in Sweden. Bees that can't stand 500 or 1000 mites in
a colony if regularely treated can stand several thousands of mites if no
pesticides or acids are used. But if you have big bees/big cells the bees
will die eventually if nothing is done. Be cautious though to shift queen
to get a fresh pheromone producer when stopping using treatments. It's
especially bad to use acid in autumn if the amounts of mites is high in our
northern climate. the bees will not make it through winter then.

2.Use mite trapping drone combs in spring (a little bit contrary to keeping
a high level of wanted drones in the air) as long as the bees build comb.
Of course take away frames before hatching. Freeze them and let the birds
eat them afterwards or melt them. (Good for chickens).

3. Use a bottom board with netting on the bottom and a box at least 2" deep
under it. Make it possible to pull a drwaer out under the netting backwards
and check the amount of mites fallen, during 14 days in late May/early June
(our climate) Go get rid of a number of mites through the netting which
can't climbe up again still living and during these 14 days you get an
estimation of the number of mites. In our climate when the number of mites
is more than 30 per day (Use a calculator after estimating roughly the
number) you kill the queen and divide the whole colony into splits/nucs and
give them a ripe queen cell (maybe 10 days later after destroying all queen
cells to give the bees a still longer time without brood. If you don't find
the queen don't bother, after 10 days you do. Eggs in that one with the
queen. Now it's small and easier to find the queen. These nucs will be big
enough to winter in autumn and best of all, they will have a very small
population of mites due to small amount of brood during build up time.
These nucs will give crop next year. Some of the bigger colonies not split
up will die, but not many. Of curse you graft from those colonies that had
the smallest amount of mites last spring and was healthiest.

AND

when retrogressing are doing best going smaller.
It could be noted that when in spring you take a whole colony and out it on
frames with only small foundationstarters in the top of frames, you take
away all the brood frames and give to other colonies. This is kind of a
treatment in that you take away a big portion of the mites from this
colony. But it will put a higher pressure for a while on the other
colonies. But these could be used making splits/nucs as above.
Also instead of using a screened bottom as above as a treatment you could
close the normal entrance, use an empty box at least 6" high without frames
on this closed bottom and use drilled holes in the boxes as entrances. this
keeps the mites that have fallen off the bees from waiting on the bootom
and jump on a passing bee, as the bees won't pass them there on the bottom.
The still live mites will just lie there till they die. They just crawl a
very short distance before they stop and wait for a bee.

THEN

when succesfully retrogressed you just keep bees the old way, just
loosing those odd colonies you always loose every year anyhow.
At least this is what I've figured out. Anyone who wants to try?

....

>I can only repeat that "inbreeding" does have a justifiable place in bee
>breeding...

I suspect that you in the term "inbreeding" include mating of the queen to
drones of the same kind of stock, not only to very close relatives of
drones? Well I say, for the queen to mate to the same stock but not to very
close relatives is normally the normal, but some odd crossing to another
race is also normal as some odd mating to close relative too, but most
normal is the first option here, as I can figure out.

Merry Christmas

Erik