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Heaflaw, I don't mind telling... I've been telling for 7 years now....and I do not mind repeating myself. Appreciate you asking, for the benefit of some new readers.
My most successful bees have...

Start with a package from a southern breeder who sells bonafide treatment free bees...they're out there, just do it.
Regards,
Steven

There are two basic ways to go treatment free.
First, get some bees and don't treat. Breed from the survivors year after year, and after massive losses, you'll have treatment free bees.

Second,...

To reply, yep, I've used their queens and packages, and highly recommend them. Since re-starting in beekeeping with two of their packages in the spring of 2006 I have never treated for mites, nor...

yeah, Mike's right. Pair of jeans, duct-taped pant legs to boots, old long sleeved white shirt no longer fit to wear to church, pith helmet and veil. gloves optional.

The bees don't warm the hive, they maintain a constant temperature in the cluster, over any brood. They are constantly circulating from the inside to the outside of the cluster, as the heater bees...

My goodness, I leave town for a few days for the Dadant celebration, and look what happens to the thread I started! :gh:

Ok, what I've gleaned so far, which pretty much was what I expected, there...

In the States I use TurboTax, which does the hard work for me. There should be something comparable in Canada. You input the data where requested in the tax program, the program does the work for...

Understand, Greg, but please report back next year how one trap among 30 hives worked for you.
Regards,
Steven

Many package sellers also provide instructions on how to install packages. Regarding the queen, some folks say leave the cork in the candy end for a few days before removing it, to keep her confined...

Roland expressed a hypothesis here that I've read elsewhere, about the inbreeding of the mites which reduces their virulence. If I understand him correctly. Others have speculated that the bees and...

Hi Dan! Guilty as charged! :eek: With this caveat: I have always maintained that my bees have varroa, but they seem to be able to handle the mite problem. Now, I don't test for varroa, because...

Jim, that's kinda my point... What if we assume that a "treatment free" bee deals with varroa and survives, and a treated hive survives, why can't one assume (yes, I know about assumptions :D) that...

Excellent points, Beemandan and Ian. I do recall reading about that kind of robbing transfer, as hinted at in my last post.
And based on reports "from the field" we know that both treated, and...

But the article only names one packer, Grobe Farms, was mentioned. Who was the other packer??

Here's another question to toss into the treatment free mix:
And I'm asking, because I'm seeking to learn.

If the end result of any anti-mite program is to enable the bees to survive the mites...

Use smoke, and wear a veil. Sure, occasionally you can get by without either, but are you willing to risk your vision (a sting in the eye)? And remember, ALL bees come armed! Even if they're...

I don't know about you, but I think this has been/is a good discussion! :popcorn:

As they say, all beekeeping is local, and perhaps that's one reason why the migratory beekeeper has such...

Specialkayme, by "reinventing the wheel" I'm referring to beekeepers who believe they have to go cold turkey or develop their own treatment free bees, with the attendant risks. Such bees are already...

It seems to me the key to going treatment free, especially for the commercial beekeeper, is not to reinvent the wheel, as it were. That could be very expensive and disastrous. The cheapest and...

Jim, I agree that for the commercial beekeeper, treatment free honey has no economic value over honey that comes from treated hives. The commercial beek is going to treat responsibly to avoid...

I don't know how many years its been since we had a variation of this conversation, and I asked because time has gone by. Then folks who went "treatment free" were considered nuts, to be kind (as...

I use double deeps year round. Here I pull the last honey Labor Day, and leave them the two deeps for overwintering. I'll check them late Sept/early October to see how they're packing away any fall...

A few years ago Ted K and I entered into a wager, that within 15 years even commercial beekeepers would be treatment free. In light of some comments made on the "unwritten rules..." thread about the...

If you're serious about getting into beekeeping, esp.on a commercial basis, you have already started subscribing to either Bee Culture or the American Bee Journal. Plenty of ads in those two...