Sustainable Mite Control (SMC)

[wmgysi]

I have been using SMC management for several years now as described in Harmonic Farming: Bees and had excellent results. Do not need any medication or treatment, just management.

[WI-beek]

Please elaborate and give us something to chew on. How many colonies? what are your results? Health issues on none? What have you been doing to control mites, nothing?

I dont mean to be rude but your post sounds like this: I bought a leash at pet surplus and took my dog for a walk around the block.

Give us something to chew on buddy!

[Oldbee]

Yes WI-beek, I would have liked more explaination about what this thread was about,..besides SMC also.

I guess we were "supposed to" check out Harmonic Farming: Bees, [A book,.$24.95,.144 pages. Release date, Mar.2011] on are own with no link provided. >> http://goolymooly.ca/data/publishing...book_bees.html << Thanks anyway,..wmgysi

[jrbbees]

Maybe we are supposed to buy the book?

[Adrian Quiney WI]

If you click on the tab (above the picture of the bees) that says "TOC and Chapter 4" you can read what Werner has written.

[Grant]

Here's one better: the link to a sample chapter.

http://goolymooly.ca/data/publishing...book_bees.html

He drives home an important point: we can't continue keeping bees with these chemicals. And many beekeepers would concede what used to work just ain't cutting the mustard.

At the ABF conference in Galveston, Randy Oliver gave a great talk on looking to nature as the model for our selection of mite-tolerant bees. It's the "virulent pressure" that keeps the bees tough and resistant. His solution is challenge the bees, allow the stress from mites to bring out their best.

The term he used in this talk was epigenetics, the process by which genetic information, as modified by environmental influences, is translated into the substance and behavior of an organism. To put that in English, mite pressure flips the genetic switch which brings out the bees' response for survivability.

Grant
Jackson, MO

[wmgysi]

Please elaborate and give us something to chew on. How many colonies? what are your results? Health issues on none? What have you been doing to control mites, nothing?

I dont mean to be rude but your post sounds like this: I bought a leash at pet surplus and took my dog for a walk around the block.

Give us something to chew on buddy!

Sorry, just google Harmonic Farming: Bees or Werner Gysi you will find it, but someone has now linked to it. You are free to print the information but please give credit to the author, if shared.

[humbee]

"At the ABF conference in Galveston, Randy Oliver gave a great talk on looking to nature as the model for our selection of mite-tolerant bees. It's the "virulent pressure" that keeps the bees tough and resistant. His solution is challenge the bees, allow the stress from mites to bring out their best."

"The term he used in this talk was epigenetics, the process by which genetic information, as modified by environmental influences, is translated into the substance and behavior of an organism. To put that in English, mite pressure flips the genetic switch which brings out the bees' response for survivability."

Dr John Kefuss,Of Toulouse France,Has been practicing and advocating this technique for years, Well known as the 007 or "the live and let die" technique.
Good to hear Randy Oliver has joined this well known procedure.

[wmgysi]

For those that like to work their apiary in a sustainable, holistic way here is what I did with my bees yesterday, April 10/11. The 5 minute movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY6JhtfPF4w will show how to manage the varroa first thing in the spring. As I work with nature I use "natural pointers" (as explained earlier) to manage bees. These pointers are very critical in order to be in harmony with nature and at the same time help the beekeeper to structure her/his management. The first "natural pointer" is the pussy willow showing us that fresh pollen is available and this triggers the queen to lay a lot more eggs (hazelnuts will be at about the same time). The next "natural pointer" is when the temperature (in the shade) reaches 15 degree C, sunny and no wind. The attached movie will show the management at that time. Hope some of you can adapt this kind of management. I will keep you posted on the next management "dandelion flowering" but you can already read up on this at: http://goolymooly.ca/data/publishing...book_bees.html . Use the tab Holistic Hive Management and then select the tab that interests you. These are all pdf files. Feel freeto print them out to carry to your apiary. I would appreciate if you would refer to this method as SMC (sustainable mite control) by Werner Gysi. I am on a mission to save the bees and will travel across Canada this summer, starting June 8. in Calgary till August 12., reaching as far as Ottawa, ON. I have over 50 events confirmed, some to beekeeping associations. If you like to invite me please contact me.

[stangardener]

thanks for the link. i was disappointed to see the formic acid treatments.

[wmgysi]

thanks for the link. i was disappointed to see the formic acid treatments.

You must have watched a different movie. There is no formic acid involved in my management. However, I mention ways in my book Harmonic Farming: Bees (but no mention on this in that movie) how to transit from formic acid to a holistic way of beekeeping, using IPM (intergrated pest management). But ultimately there is no need for any chemicals or antibiotics. I call it sustainable as I do not rely on an outside source to produce honey, clean wax and propolis and bees that are not pampered.
go to youtube and key in Werner Gysi, there is more information there.
Good luck

[Adam Foster Collins]

wmgysi,

Thank you for your material. One question. In your Early spring stage, you essentially split the hive, separating the capped brood from the queen. My question is: Is it risky to split a hive that early - before drones are flying - so that the new queen raised in the hive containing the capped brood might have a hard time finding a sufficient number of mates?

Thanks,

Adam

[wmgysi]

wmgysi,

Thank you for your material. One question. In your Early spring stage, you essentially split the hive, separating the capped brood from the queen. My question is: Is it risky to split a hive that early - before drones are flying - so that the new queen raised in the hive containing the capped brood might have a hard time finding a sufficient number of mates?

Thanks,

Adam

This is certainly a valid concern. We have done this for over 5 years now and those hives always produced several queen cells and success rate is at 90% or higher. The queen may wait for her mating flight in order to find good gene pools, so the laying of eggs may start later than when splitting at a later date, when the dandelions are in full bloom (about 14 days from now at the latest). Once the dandelions flower it triggers the colony to gather as much nectar as they can and produce as much drone brood as is possible. If you remove capped drone frames to fill two brood boxes (20 frames) you will see that this so created split will also collect a ton of the early spring honey, as they are ready for it. As egg laying by the young queen is at least 30 days after splitting (but most likely more as you appropriately pointed out) there will be view surviving mites encountered, as their life cycle in the reproductive cycle is about 27 days (Anderson and Trueman http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/..._mite.htm#life ).

The original hives, immediately after capped bee brood removal, go into high gear and will pick up astonishingly fast. It is as if they try to go into survival mode. You need to do this before you believe me. I was surprised myself when I did my first experiments 7 years ago. But my description here is tested for the past 5 years now. This is with it a reason why I had to update my original book from 1995 and release Harmonic Farming: Bees last year.

1. If you are not sure if it keeps the mites on a sustainable level I suggest to do a mite check in the fall.
2. If you do not get a queen out of the split after lets say 33 days, unite the bees back using the newspaper method (more on breeding would be described in my book but is not the topic of this thread).
3. If nothing else, at least you will have gotten rid of most of the mites in the original hive and you can do another split at this time (if at all needed).

[stangardener]

You must have watched a different movie. go to youtube and key in Werner Gysi, there is more information there.
Good luck

my internet does not support movies so i only read text on the web page. i'm glad you were able to move away from the acid.
when i read your original post i did not realize you were the author of the link. thanks again for the work.

[Adam Foster Collins]

The problem seems to lie in the fact that the mites live longer than 27 days. According to an article from the University of Florida Department of Entomology and Nematology, they can last months as adults, feeding off adult bees. Here is a link and quote:

"The phoretic period of the mite appears to contribute to the mite's reproductive ability. Although mites artificially transferred to brood cells immediately after they mature are able to reproduce, their reproductive rate is lower than that of mites undergoing a phoretic period. The phoretic period may last 4.5 to 11 days when brood is present in the hive or as long as five to six months during the winter when no brood is present in the hive. Consequently, female mites living when brood is present in the colony have an average life expectancy of 27 days, yet in the absence of brood, they may live for many months."

This means that the removal of capped larvae sets them back - but the adults riding around on bees will keep right on going. That means that you've got to do something to kill adult mights (like sugar roll or oxalic) to knock them out - OR perhaps the setting-back of the breeding mites is enough to keep them in balance (with the removal of drone brood perhaps as well).

The question I have, is in the setting back of the colonies you're pulling the brood out of. You're setting them back early in the spring by taking their capped brood. It is commonly held that a single big, strong colony will produce far more honey than several small ones. If honey is one's goal (and it's not mine - but if it is) then how does this approach to management affect honey production? Would one have to employ other management practices, such as later combining colonies in order to get their best harvests?


Adam

[windfall]

To say that something is unsustainable just because it is labor intensive seems unfair.

In fact many sustainable practices in many fields are labor intensive and high maintance.
It has been in part the drive to have less work and ongoing envolvement that led to the use of synthetic materials and chemicals in both industry and agriculture.

Now if you want to set your goal as self-sustaining that's another thing entirely.

[Solomon Parker]

What's unfair? People start beekeeping to 'help the bees' all the time. But what are they helping if those bees die the first season they're not aggressively managed? It's only slightly better than addiction to treatments. They've traded an expensive quick chemical treadmill for an inexpensive time consuming managerial one. A step in the right direction, yes, not sustainable.

It's unsustainable not because it's labor intensive, but because it's unnecessarily labor intensive and because the season you remove your hands from the works, they quit working. That's not a very effective solution.

The only real and sustainable solution is fully resistant bees and the only way that happens is if non-resistant bees are allowed to die or their queens replaced with resistant ones. Natural selection must be used as a tool rather than fought at every turn.

[DonShackelford]

the season you remove your hands from the works, they quit working. That's not a very effective solution.

With all due respect Solomon, any season the bees are not tended to they will not produce bees or honey to an acceptable level, and winter losses will be high. The only bees naturally suited to combat mites do so by swarming often or shutting down brood production often. I'd rather have a traditional Italians and break brood cycles at my discretion, not theirs. The commercial beeks I've talked to in my area still use the Italians for the same reason.
Until a bee can be produced that actively rids the hive of mites there is no natural solution. Even VSH bees don't do that to any meaningful extent. Cleaning out dead brood is not combating mites IMHO.

[windfall]

What I find unfair is to dismiss the solutions people find that allow them to accomplish thier goal in what is a sustainable manner. Because you feel it is too much work/envolvement?

Solomon, what you are describing is a system that does not require human maintainance to continue.
That is self-sustainability. It's a great goal but rarely if ever achieved in agricultural endeavors and is quite different from sustainability, which usually requires a lot of work and time.

Would you say that organic farming is unsustainable because it requires tremendous labor and management each year? Are they all going down the wro g path since they are not breeding frost resistant plants. Or crops that don't require weeding? Are the careful interplanting and rotation schedules just wasted effort?

[Solomon Parker]

With all due respect Solomon, any season the bees are not tended to they will not produce bees or honey to an acceptable level, and winter losses will be high. The only bees naturally suited to combat mites do so by swarming often or shutting down brood production often.

But the whole point of keeping bees is manipulating them unnaturally.

Until a bee can be produced that actively rids the hive of mites there is no natural solution.

I agree with you there. But you say 'until' like it hasn't happened yet.

Would you say that organic farming is unsustainable because it requires tremendous labor and management each year? Are they all going down the wro g path since they are not breeding frost resistant plants. Or crops that don't require weeding? Are the careful interplanting and rotation schedules just wasted effort?

Don't confuse lack of major efforts to control disease with doing nothing at all.

Yes, it's true that if you don't manage bees they won't live up to their maximum potential. But we're not talking about making honey here, we're talking about keeping them alive. It's my position that they should be able to do that on their own. It's also my position that they can in fact and given the chance, they do. Mine have been doing it for coming up on a decade. I haven't had any swarms in years and I don't practice any of these so-called sustainable methods. The process is fairly quick. If they can't live on their own, let them die, or in StevenG's case, buy queens from someone who did. It's the only sustainable solution.