Small Cell Regression - Shake Down through First Season

[D. Murrell]

Hi Guys,

Here's the first topic in the small cell series. It covers the initial steps of small cell regression.

When sharing your experience/observations please include locale specific details such as number of hives involved, location, type of bees, dates, etc.

To keep the initial posts short(yes, even I'll try to do so :>) ), no restatements of the Lusby's protocols are needed.

Regards
Dennis

[Barry]

>Here's the first topic in the small cell series. It covers the initial steps of small cell regression.

Dennis -

This takes me back to an interesting time. I remember so much talk between you and I and Dee and Erik about regression. I started with a swarm. Here is the link to a page I started back then about this process. I removed the links to it as I no longer believe all the things I wrote back then. Some of the language and insight was from talking to Dee about it. Take it with a grain of salt. I will give more detail soon. need to go to bed right now.

http://www.beesource.com/eob/4dot9/index.htm

- Barry

[Sundance]

I have 20 on small cell and 30 just starting
the influx of SC. I have another 50 or so
that I will start next spring.

I am a total novice and profess zero knowledge
in SC other than the initial 20 colonies are
doing very, very well.

Thanks to all for their work in SC. I will
be reading intently.........

[D. Murrell]

Hi Barry and Everyone,

I remember those conversations and synergy. Interesting times. I was a commercial beekeeper working bees 10 hours a day. And I spent an additional 3 hours a day focused on these experiments.

In 1996, I set aside a beeyard, with about a dozen hives, to run without the apistan strip treatments. Mite trays were installed on all hives. I began counting mites and selecting bees for mite tolerance. Alternative mite treatments were tested in this yard. Formic, drone comb removal, essential oils, FGMO, grapefruit smoking, powder sugar dusting and oxalic were some of these. All treatments were stopped in the fall of 1999.

In 2000, I bought one of the first Russian breeders sold and requeened this yard. When Dadant offered small cell foundation, toward the end of 2000, I bought enough to convert this yard to small cell.

In the early spring of 2001, I began regressing about a dozen full size hives and half a dozen singles onto small cell foundation. Full size hives were reduced to a single that consisted of a division board feeder, three large cell frames of sealed brood, two large cell frames of honey, two drone combs, and two frames of small cell foundation.

As the hive expanded throughout the spring, the large cell honey, brood, and drone frames were rotated out of the single and replaced with frames of small cell foundation. Toward late spring, a box of small cell foundation was added on top of the singles. Any remaining large cell comb was then rotated up and out.

The Russians bees and my own breeder mutts did a good job of drawing out the small cell sized foundation. They would draw out anywhere from 6 to 8 frames and then would rework the rest to a larger size.

Mid-summer mite counts were typical of a large cell, untreated colony. Natural mite fall consisted of mature, undamaged females.

By late summer, the bees began uncapping sealed brood at the purple eye stage. The mite trays showed the majority of the fallen mites had been bitten by the bees and mites of all stages and both sexes were abundant. A close inspection of uncapped brood revealed that they were mite infected. Uncapping and inspecting hundreds of sealed brood, on the same frames, revealed almost no mite infected pupa. The bees were detecting and removing mite infected pupa. The broodnest cleaning, that the Lusby's reported, was actively seen in my hives.

The broodnest cleaning continued through September and tapered off by mid October.

Going into winter, these small cell hives had plenty of stores and good cluster size. They were in excellent shape. I re-arranged, sorted and culled any oversize or poorly drawn small cell foundation, so that ten small cell doubles went into winter with two boxes of small cell comb.

I kept track of the mite counts but have now, misplaced them. I posted them on Biobee, I think at Bee-L and maybe here. The counts were higher than I would have liked, but I wasn't too concerned. I was looking for survivors.

I installed a plexiglass inner cover on a small cell hive and moved it to my backyard for close monitoring/mite counting, etc. over the winter.

Before installing small cell, I was very skeptical about the rational behind it. I was sure that the Lusbys and others in the Southwest US had a fortunate combination of bee genetics, probably with an African infuence. At the end of the first season, I was optimistic about small cell. The Russians and even my own mutts were behaving in a new and different way. They could detect, remove and destroy(bite) varroa mites. I had been looking but never seen this before. It was very exciting!

Regards
Dennis

[ September 06, 2006, 12:30 PM: Message edited by: B Wrangler ]

[wayacoyote]

My Regression process:
1) Focus on a small number of hives (as few as one) and regress these "focus hives".

2) As intermediately sized combs are removed from the "focus hive(s)", feed them into the next "focus hive(s)" to begin their regression.

3) Continue bringing more hives online in increasingly large batches as more hives become regressed and produce smaller comb.

4) Don't destroy intermediate sized comb until all hives are regressed.


Yesterday, my girlfriend and I were checking her family's hives. She started with her dad's LC hives and ended with her intermediate hive. She was stunned at the obvious size difference in the worker bees from the LC and SC hives.

Waya