benign beekeeping?

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Originally Posted by Solomon Parker

I moved six hives from Oregon to Arkansas in 2008. They could not survive temperatures of 0 F, twenty degrees lower than to what they were accustomed. Five of the six died within two years. .

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I don't see how moving your bees from Oregon to Arkansas, killed your bees...within two years. If the move killed them, they would have been dead when you got there...or by the end of their first winter. Did someone say "winter" in Arkansas??

I've seen bees fail because they were moved...didn't winter as well as the colonies not moved. But the rest of the colonies were normal the following spring.
I could buy it if you moved from Arkansas to Bend, Oregon...in the mountains. Hard to buy into your claim when you say the Arkansas winter killed your bees.

"Winter in Arkansas" is what you and I would call "the rainy season", Mike. :)

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Originally Posted by jbeshearse

Ace,

You never really want a spotty brood pattern.

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I am not going to take up the argument / discussion. I couldn't do it justice, but I heard Michael Bush say something that made a whole lot of sense to me. Come to think of it everything he says makes a whole lot of sense to me.:)

Mike, I'm not making a claim, I'm telling you what happened. It's not my problem if you think you know about weather in two places you've never been.

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Originally Posted by Solomon Parker

I'm not willing to ascribe the death of a hive to mites when no trace of a mite can be found in that hive.

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Originally Posted by Solomon Parker

Nor did I ever say if anyone had been paying attention that I have no mites.

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i respect your right to approach mite infestation according to your beliefs.

we were debating other possibilities for your hives collapsing. did you have mites or not? and how did you determine your mite levels?

I've already said what I meant to say Squarepeg. I'm not going to play the quoting out of context game.

i'm not into playing games sol. the point wasn't 'gotcha'. the point is you have contradicted yourself in your responses to those suggesting other factors were involved in your colonies collapsing.

your were adamant that moving hives kills bees, and you insist that mites did not kill yours, but you have not provided satisfactory answers to the reasonable questions that have been asked of you.

and you don't have to sol. it's not a trial, it's just a forum. :)

I will repeat myself again for your benefit. I have mites, everybody does. I don't believe those hives died due to mites because none of the evidence fits, nor do y'all's theories. No, I don't have any evidence other than what I saw.

If those aren't satisfactory answers, whether you like them or not, that's your issue, not mine. I have been open and honest and will continue to be so.

I would love to see some evidence for the assertions that bees can't die of cold. I guess nobody told the Africanized bees.

thanks sol. and i'll try one more time to ask the question:

what 'evidence' do you have that mites weren't involved if you don't have mite counts?

16 years living in Kansas, not that far or that different than Arkansas. And 35 years living in Nevada. I can tell you I know both. and it is a huge difference in winter cold. Kansas is bitter in comparison. From what I know about Oregon I don't think humidity would be a lot different. I can't say about Arkansas. no self respecting Jayhawker would step foot there. :)

And Square Peg, You can't prove a negative. as in you can't prove you don't have mites. You can't prove something didn't happen. at most you could prove that they did die of something else.

If you are suggesting your bees may have been Africanized then you have just made your first good argument on this issue. If not, then perhaps you should just admit that you don't know why your bees died and take the word of many folks with far more experience in wintering bees in cold climates than you. It's no disgrace to admit you may have been in error and to learn from it which would make you like everyone else in the world including me. The nice thing about a forum like this is it forces you to look at things from a perspective that you probably never would have on your own. There are a lot of smart folks on here and a few....well I better leave it at that. :) Come on Sol, just don't get all bent out of shape about it, its just a little learning experience and no, there have been no insults or name calling, just me having a little fun and Dan using the word chuckle (heaven forbid). Time to move on?

>>I think it is safe to say that feral colonys exist w/out beekeeper intervention, but to say they exist, or survive, "just fine" w/out intervention may be a stretch.

Who measures the success of the feral colony performance, the feral bees or out side looking beekeepers. There are feral bees out there, surviving and reproducing, and according to the laws of nature, they are meeting their minimum requirements and surviving just fine.

But there is one thing I do not understand, about this whole naturalist management system
Why is it that there are some beekeepers who think we can manage bees in a non management sence,.?
We as beekeeper control behaviour through out the year to maximize the hive potential to which we make a living. We step aside from the harshness of nature to increase survival and honey production by manipulating growth, feeding during derths, providing comb, and controling diseases. To manage bees we must cover all conditions. If a beekeeper follows all the management steps to achieve their hives maximum honey potential but insists on not following through with disease control, .... whats the point?
You will spend all your time building and working these hives, and then just let mother nature take them before you can pull any benefit off them.
I kind of understand why you guys dont like chemicals and such but look at the other options out there.

If you want to go treatment free, you will have to be more in tuned with the colonies disease pressures. You still have to manage disease pressures! otherwise nature will just kill them off anyway

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Originally Posted by squarepeg

what 'evidence' do you have that mites weren't involved if you don't have mite counts?

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Read the thread. It's all there. If there's something you are unclear about, then you can ask questions. I'm done with wasting my time retyping exactly the same things I typed yesterday and the day before. Just admit you don't accept what I have to say. It would save all our time.

Here, I'll say it for you. "'I don't accept your visual inspections as evidence.' - Squarepeg" - Sol

Can we move on now?

ok, you said it. or rather you said it for me, saying it for you.

i'm kinda dense sometimes sol. :)

does anybody accept visual inspections as evidence for the presence or absence of mites?

i'm not into attacking anybody, i'm just trying to learn.

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Originally Posted by squarepeg

does anybody accept visual inspections as evidence for the presence or absence of mites?

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yes, there are many visual signs of a colony failing because of mites. But to actually know whats going on, testing has to be done

thanks ian. several signs of mite infestation have already been mentioned, but you are saying that testing is the only way to be sure?

You can walk into a yard, open your tops and look in at a hive. By that you can not tell if you have mites. You can look further, like on the bottom board or entrance, and there you will start seeing signs of viral infections usually directly related to mites. You can look further and pull some frames of brood, there you will see further evidence of viral infections of the young bees emerging, directly related to mites. But if your seeing all that stuff your hive has already crashed.
You need to know your mite levels, and need to know your thresholds. I dont care what you use your thresholds for, whether its for treatment action or anyother type of action. The point is action has to be taken or that hive WILL die if mite levels are over the threshold.

I wash my bees in alcohol, few bees per hive, and count my % infestation. Spring time threshold is 1% and 3% in fall for my operation

Square Peg, I think you first attempt went crosswise in asking this question. Not that I see that as your fault. But no I don't consider inspections adequate to even discover mites. That from an over curious first year beekeeper that probably had mite problems since June or so and didn't find them until August. In hind sight I can see that a lowering of honey production in my hive may have been the result of an increase in mites. I was at a loss and not certain it was normal. I realize one of my worst deficits right now is recognizing symptoms in a beehive. Those I do believe exist. But visually seeing a mite is not one of them. I never did see a mite on a bee. I found them on drone brood that I pulled from their cells. Pulling drones pupa will now be a standard part of my hive inspections. I do not have screen bottom boards or stick paper yet. but will have them by spring. I actually want to make bottom boards for may hives that serve multiple functions. Mite counts being just one.

Through the summer I just do ether rolls by taking a few bees from about 10 different hives in a yard, a really easy way is to open up some drone brood or even a small patch of worker brood and tap it out on a white surface. If it looks like someone has just been there with a pepper grinder then there is trouble brewing. The only caveat being that if the patch of brood you are using is about the only brood left in the hive it most likely will contain a pretty good number of mites as it is "the only show in town". Having a lot of hives your decision is whether to treat the whole yard or not and not to make individual hive assessments. If I only had a few hives I would monitor each hive via sticky board natural mite drops and use drone brood removal and analysis of that brood or sugar shakes to decide what to do with each hive individually.No need to treat hives that are doing fine on their own.
Visual inspections (just looking closely at bees) mean nothing to me. If I see them there is most likely a BIG problem as my eyes just aren't that sharp and most mites hide on the bee anyway.
A quick "poor mans sticky board" that I have used on occasion is a bunch of Crisco smeared on some freezer paper and placed on the bottom board. It's only good for about one day though as the bees will begin to clean it off pretty quickly. It's also a good idea to look closely if there are any unattended obscure corners of a bottom board that the bees aren't cleaning. Dead mites can occasionally be found there and can be an indication of bigger problems.

>>Visual inspections (just looking closely at bees) mean nothing to me.

I doubt that, I bet you will use visual inspections to diagnosis a death problem

>>ether rolls

The thing I like about counting mites in an alcohol wash is that it gives parameters to work in. If the testing falls within a certain reading, you have high limits and low limits to base treatments on or alternative actions on.