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Starting out in treatment-free beekeeping

38K views 163 replies 35 participants last post by  Andrew Dewey 
#1 ·
I've been writing an article for my website that sets out a plan for starting as a treatment-free beekeeper. I was wondering what other treatment-free beekeepers thought of my ideas. This is just the text, there will be pictures. Enjoy.



How to start Beekeeping

This is a sensitive subject for many reasons. We’ve come to a time in beekeeping history when there are perhaps more people trying to start beekeeping and failing than ever before. This leads to a great number of disaffected former once upon a time newbee beekeepers. I don’t want this. I don’t know of any beekeeper or experienced beekeeper who doesn’t think this is a terrible thing. Beekeeping as a career is diminishing. Beekeeping is becoming harder to do and make money. And while I’m not terribly concerned about the maintenance of the commercial beekeeping profession, I am concerned about assuring that new beekeepers have a positive and fulfilling experience. So I’ve given this a lot of thought and I’ve come up with a plan and a philosophy that I haven’t heard from anyone else and I haven’t at the time of this writing told anyone else. I think it can help to make a difference and give the freshman treatment-free beekeeper a leg up on the status quo.

Before you get the bees
Guideline #1: Never purchase your bees in the same year as you decide to become a beekeeper.
What I’ve seen happen is every spring, a whole new crop of beekeepers come in and plop down their $200 for their starter kit with a deep hive body and a medium super and a veil and a smoker and a hive tool and the other little accessories that come along with it. Then they’ll plop down their $100 for their 3 lb. package of bees which due to some natural disaster will not be delivered on time. This throws the newbee into a nervous fit because everything is not working out exactly how they planned. Little do they know that this is the way of things and that they will subsequently receive a whole bunch more of the same. There are so many threads which start on Beesource.com which are something like the following: “Help!!! Something about this is going totally different than I expected!!!” It causes a whole lot of problems for queen and package producers.
So take the time. Take the time to study and prepare. This isn’t like buying a hamster. Bees are sophisticated insects. They shouldn’t need you to survive, and if they had the intellectual aptitude, they would most certainly reject you as their manager. Study. Never stop learning. Open your mind and if all else fails, simply do nothing. You can’t make it much worse by doing nothing. You can certainly make it worse by jumping the gun and doing the wrong thing.
Buy some good beekeeping books and read them cover to cover. I recommend “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Beekeeping” by Dean Stiglitz and Laurie Herboldsheimer and “The Practical Beekeeper” by Michael Bush. Michael’s book is much thicker and more expensive, but at the same time, virtually all of it is available on his website Bush Farms. Spend a lot of time there. You won’t regret it.

Guideline #2: Don’t start with just one hive.
There is simply too much to go wrong to consider this as an option these days. There really is a serious chance that one hive will die in its first winter. If it’s not due to mites, it could be due to related viruses or infections or it could be starvation or it could be a failed late season supersedure or it could be by robbing from neighborhood colonies. There are just so many things that could go wrong that first year. Additionally, having more than one hive gives you many options for helping out your other hives. Call it socialism or Robin Hooding or whatever, but it’s really helpful to be able to pull a frame of open brood out of a neighboring hive and be able to give it to a queenless hive so they can make their own queen. It’s also very helpful to be able to equalize stored honey in the fall when some hives may have more than they need and some may be a bit short.
When I started, I started with 20 packages. But that was back when packages cost $35 apiece whereas now, they may cost $100. That many would only be for the most serious of starting beekeepers as I was. I was intending to become a commercial beekeeper. I didn’t end up doing that, but I did learn a vital lesson. My recommendation is to start with no fewer than five hives. As to how to start them, I’ll deal with that in a minute.
Be serious. Starting with five hives is a serious investment and if you are wanting to be a treatment-free beekeeper, a serious investment is necessary, not only in bees and equipment but in study and planning. At this point in time treatment-free beekeeping WILL NOT WORK by buying bees and putting them in a hive and leaving them in the back yard. Do not be fooled. It is not as easy as that. There’s a reason most of the beekeeping community are still using treatments. Treatments help avoid big and immediate and hard to stomach losses. They are the easy way to do things and they do produce results, for a while. But as it has been shown over the years, eventually the effectiveness of the treatment wears off and then you’re still stuck with the same problem. To succeed in treatment-free beekeeping, much attentiveness and study and work is necessary. But it’s worth it, for you and for the bees, in the long run. Take it seriously.

What bees to get
Guideline #3: Start with nucs. (This means two things.)
Before you can get bees, you need something to put them in. As I mentioned before, newbees commonly jump on the internet or run down to their local beekeeping supply store and grab a beginner’s kit. Don’t do it. You don’t need all this stuff yet, and as far as I can tell, it’s overpriced anyway.
The first problem is, they give you the most expensive equipment, the ‘Select’ grade stuff. You don’t need this. It’s made specifically for people who don’t know any better. You want commercial grade stuff. It’s just as good, not as pretty, but it will be painted anyway. Second, you can’t pick your frame size and often foundation is included so you can’t pick cell size either. I will only ever recommend small cell or natural cell. You don’t need gloves. You don’t want an entrance feeder. You’re not going to want the tiny smoker they’ll give you. You don’t need inner and telescoping covers, you can use migratory or plywood or something simple. They’re not going to give you the kind of veil you want or need. You don’t need a screened bottom board. You don’t need the book they’re gonna give you and you don’t need their video, that’s what YouTube is for in this generation.
Some thinking is required.
The main thing you should decide right at this point is what size frame you’d like to deal with. Many Bee-ginner’s kits include two boxes with two different sizes of frames. However due to a lot of issues I discuss on the Size Considerations page, you should pick a single frame size, and generally speaking, I’d recommend the medium. I have used a single frame size in my entire beekeeping career and have never regretted it. All those frames were deeps and at times I have been disappointed with that choice but never the choice to use one size.
The next decision is what to purchase to start beekeeping. Your choices are in most cases to buy established hives, buy nucleus hives, or buy packages. There’s also the option of catching swarms which I heartily recommend at all stages of beekeeping, but it’s not really reliable as a method on acquiring bees. If you have the opportunity to buy established treatment-free hives pay whatever it takes. However, since that is a near impossibility, my recommendation is to purchase treatment-free nucs. Those are also few and far between, so the next best option is to purchase treatment-free package bees. But those are also hardly available. There are small cell versions of both those and that would be the next best option. If you get in early enough, you should be able to get small cell nucs without too much hassle. I got some from Dixie Bee Supply without too many problems a few years back.
Now for the second part of ‘Start with Nucs.’
Thus far, the things I have recommended are pretty standard. But the next part, I have never heard anyone talk about. I think you should do a year or two keeping only nucleus hives. I think you should increase as much as possible, I think you should overwinter them, and I think you can use them to continue to develop your treatment free operation long after you’ve switched to full size hives.
There’s a number of reasons why I think you should do this. First of all is cost. The cost of five five-frame nucs is significantly less than five hives with lids and bottoms. It gives you an excellent opportunity to make your own nucs and pretty good quality ones for $5 each. That’s right, $5 each! Here’s how you do it:
[Insert Nuc plan pic here]
This is what they look like when they’re done.
[]
These ones are 5-frame deeps, but you can easily adjust the sizes of the sides and ends and tops to make them for any type or size of nuc you want.
This is a simple five frame nuc design that uses ½” nominal (15/32” actual) plywood and you can make four of them (5-frame deeps) from a single piece of plywood costing about $16. I do not yet know how many you can make in mediums. I’m thinking about doing 6 frame medium nucs just because it gives a little more space for overwintering. I’m not sure yet how successful it can be to overwinter medium nucs but I know that Michael Palmer and others overwinter 4-frame deep nucs in Vermont and 6 medium frames approximately equals 4 deep frames in deep so I’m confident that it can be done.
This is a fantastic opportunity to get started with a minimum amount of investment and with the maximum chance of success due to the capability for rapid increase. With nucs, you’ll need to take a more active management direction because they fill up so fast and can swarm. As a new beekeeper, you’re gonna want to do this anyway. So here’s your opportunity. If your hives are bringing in a goodly amount of nectar and pollen, you’ll probably have to take a frame out of the hive every week to make sure they don’t fill up and swarm too fast. If you have five five-frame nucs, that means every week, you’ll have five frames that you’ll need to do something with. Start a new nuc. Here it is your second or third week of beekeeping and you’re already learning how to increase. Pay attention though, small nucs have a habit of absconding if weather is too hot in the summer and it may be profitable to build little supers to go on your nucs and give the bees some extra space. Or, this might be a good time to start to build or purchase full size boxes which can be used as 8-10 frame nucs themselves.
[10 frame nuc pic]
This is the kind of steep learning curve you can really sink your teeth into. And to keep ahead of the mites you’ll need rapid increase especially if you started with poorer stock. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to at least double your number of hives in your first year. If you do well and have favorable conditions, you might even get up to 20 nucs from five in your first year. If feeding is necessary, it’s a whole lot easier to feed 20 nucs to full than it is fewer bigger hives.
The first winter will be the first real challenge. Many if not all hives will be seeing increased mite loads, some to the point of crashing. This may be a good time to consolidate your five frame nucs into 10 frame nucs. Kill off the poorly performing queen and unite the nucs using one of several methods. You can do a newspaper combine, or you can place both into a neutral box. Bees know within seconds if you place a frame into a hive which is not their own. You’ll know this by watching and listening to them. A neutral hive leaves everybody without the need to defend something. Use it. It may be useful to stack the nucs together in a sheltered spot to give them the best opportunity. Find out what works best.
Make sure you watch this video: http://vimeo.com/23178333 several times to glean the necessary information to succeed in this venture. Victory favors the prepared.

Guideline #4: Be Realistic.
If there’s one thing you must know as a treatment-free beekeeper is that some hives will die. What I’ve tried to do on this page is prepare you for that eventuality. You need to get used to it. You need to plan for it. You need to prepare for it. You need to be able to handle it emotionally. It’s hard to watch a hive die, but that’s how nature works. That’s how natural selection works. That’s how it NEEDS to work. It’s that process that you must rely on to winnow your bees and leave you with the best ones. Having more to winnow gives more chances for success.
Secondly, don’t expect any honey in the first year. Don’t even try. You can scoop a little out with your finger to get a taste and maybe you could pull a frame early in the summer and crush and strain it to whet your appetite, but don’t go buying an extractor. Don’t get ahead of yourself. You need a little experience and to start to get good at it before you can reliably expect any honey. Keep that in mind and be okay with it. If you do the right things at the right time and learn the right things before making the wrong mistakes, you’ll get all the honey you could want. Have patience.

Guideline #5: Don’t freak out.
You’re new at this. Things aren’t going to go well at all points in the process. On my first try, I didn’t get the foundation installed correctly and it was all falling out and causing huge messes. I was reduced to tears. It was a really bad day. Of course, it wasn’t just a handful of hives, it was twenty. But I learned from it. I didn’t do that again. I learned how to put comb into frames like doing a cutout of a feral colony. This is the sort of thing you’ll do too. It’s okay. That’s why I suggest you start with so many hives. It gives you a greater number of chances to succeed (or fail depending on how you look at things.)
If you do have problems, an online forum is a fantastic place to get them figured out. But don’t scream and cry and foam at the mouth (textually speaking). Slow down and ask your question patiently and intelligently. If you follow my advice, hopefully it won’t be all of your hives that are in dire straits. In fact, you might just for fun leave one completely alone for the first year, kind of like a control group in a scientific experiment.
And if things do go seriously south, hopefully you’ve expended a smaller amount of energy and money than you would have had you gone other directions. I really do want you to succeed as a beekeeper, whether it be as a backyard beekeeper, a hobbyist, a sideliner, or a commercial. We all do.

Recapitulation
Guideline #1: Never purchase your bees in the same year as you decide to become a beekeeper.
Guideline #2: Don’t start with just one hive.
Guideline #3: Start with nucs. (This means two things.)
Guideline #4: Be Realistic.
Guideline #5: Don’t freak out.
 
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#41 ·
I had already decided to do this almost exactly as you put it down. You saved me the trouble of writeing up my plan as I can just print yours out. Yes I like to have solid plans and I know the bees will try to break me from that but, I know plans have to be adjusted so the bees and I can come to an understanding.:gh:
I picked up my wood today and start making my woodenware this weekend. Can't wait for spring. Don't even have bees yet and I'm already hooked just from all the studying I've been doing over the last few months. My GF told me today that she hasn't seen me so excited about anything in years :).
 
#42 ·
I too am planning to start beekeeping in the spring and I'll be starting out (mostly) as you suggest.

I decided that I wanted to do this back in May of this year, and I've been reading and studying ever since. I'm planning to get bees in the spring of 2012 to begin my colonies. One place we differ is in number of hives. I'll be starting with two, not five. It seems that everywhere I look people suggest that a newbie not start with just one hive, so I made plans for two. Going with five is not entirely out of the questions, but my biggest concern would be where to put them. I've already gathered the woodenware I'll need for two eight-frame, medium hives, with four bodies each. At this point I still need to assemble and finish it, but I've got it all on hand. And I've found a supplier of small cell, treatment free bees (Wolf Creek in my case, although Dixie Bee is still around) and have made plans to buy two nucs from them in the spring. I'll get up and going early next year. I plan to take no honey and, if I can get one hive through the first winter, I'll declare victory. Both would be better, although losing both won't be catastrophic. I'll just buy more bees.

I must admit that I could probably have made five nucs work as a starting configuration, if I had seen your plan earlier on. I'm not sure how I would have accommodated five full size hives, but it's likely not all would have survived the first winter. In any event, I'm far enough along at this point in my plans for two eight-frame hives that changing course would be difficult (read: expensive). So I'm going to try and make the best of it. I'm sure I'll be around with lots of questions in the spring. And, come spring of 2013, you may see me eating crow and buying a sheet of plywood. :)

Brian
 
#43 ·
Off Topic
This drives me crazy also Omie

He uses Mite away formic acid pads twice a year every year routinely, but when I remind him of this he merely flips it off, saying "formic acid is all organic!, it's not a chemical treatment!" Rather exasperating.
Formic Acid is a chemical! It is an organic acid because it contains a -COOH or carboxyl group like acetic acid, lactic acid and all fatty acids as opposed to inorganic acids which contain an inorganic constituent (one without carbon). It has nothing to do with the current use of of the term organic to mean "natural".
 
#44 ·
Good point. I work with the scientific term 'organic' all the time. Organic simply means molecules containing carbon. In that sense, formic acid is organic. IT IS NOT ORGANIC in the sense of natural, chemical free, or treatment-free. Education is the key. If we work to educate, our honey will sell for more. The taste and the pollen content in comparison to store-bought honey helps though.
 
#45 ·
Yes, Formic acid is an organic acid, just like water and sugar(sucrose) are chemicals. It impossible to be chemical free. We are all composed of chemicals. We are missing an adjective, like "synthetic" that will differentiate between chemicals that are used in concentrations found in nature, and chemicals that are manmade, or used in concentrations not found in nature. Formic acid is a good example. Yes, it is found in honey, but not in concentrations that are present when using it as a miticide.

Sorry , I went off topic also.

Crazy Roland
 
#46 ·
I have a friend that went bee less this season. He refuses to pay money for bees and has always relied on catching swarms. Well his hives died out last winter and he didn't get any swarms. Now mind you this guy has been doing this for a long time. He is one of the original beekeeper in our local club. You would describe him as a natural beekeeper because he doesn't intervene at all. I guess now you would call him a veteran bee haver. I myself don't know what the answer is for successful beekeeping but for newbies who are thinking natural I definitely would not start out with 20 hives unless you have the paycheck to gamble.
 
#47 ·
I myself don't know what the answer is for successful beekeeping but for newbies who are thinking natural I definitely would not start out with 20 hives unless you have the paycheck to gamble.
Please re-read the plan. It calls for starting with 5 nucs and then expanding from there if the person can swing it. They could just as easily move in the direction of larger hives rather than more numerous nucs. The expansion is to build resistance and buffer the effect of losses.
 
#48 ·
I understand the logic behind multiple hives but I also know that most ventures fail because of overextending. (shooting your wad at the beginning)

I contend that it is better to start with one hive then never to start. If it fails your character will be tested to try again. If five nucs fail your character may not be that strong to try again. Both involve 100% loses but one is easier to take. Most importantly, both cases are realistic.
 
#49 ·
Wow has this thread deviated a lot from where it started. Solomon, I applaud your effort for the article, I wish I had read it when I started. I basically did the same thing, but I used 8 frame mediums instead, basically the same size as a 5 frame deep, comb surface wise. I started with 3 packages and built to 8 hives before winter, by way of cut outs and swarms, never using a "synthetic chemical treatment" to control mites.

That following spring I had 1 hive survive the winter, out of 8, an 87% loss. The survivor was a nasty tempered hive from a cut out. Some folks would pack it in right there, but I didnt, I took that hive that survived, split it, split it again, and again, raised queens from it, and came up to 10 hives and 2 nucs. The nucs were an expierement to see if they would survive the winters here. I requeened the nasty tempered hives, and squished the queens that had bad brood patterns, chalkbrood, or had daughters that were "HOT". This could be seen as a type of treatment I feel, so I guess I cant be "treatment free".

I do "treat' for mites though, if you consider brood cycle breaks to be treatments. I do not use "synthetic chemical treatments" for varroa. I feed sugar syrup when needed, so I guess I cant say I am 100% treatment free, agian, as one could say that the syrup is a treatment for lack of stores.

I dont think in this era that a person could be 100% treatment free, as anything someone does to a colony could be construed as a treatment by someone else. Heck even wrapping for winter and proping the inner cover could be construed as a treatment. Sometimes people are way to critical of others without thinking for a while before hand.

Solomon, again great article, and I do hope you publish it somewhere, I like the insight that you have shown.
 
#50 ·
Joseph,

A few years back, Randy Oliver share lots of ideas with beekeepers in Santa Fe. He told the group, that somehow, varroa mites were present in the southwest, but were not overwhelming the hives. He said that regional bees or conditions in the southwest, were not allowing mites to be a big problem.
 
#51 ·
NY Blues: Just read the definition in the sticky at the top of the forum. After much debate by the "founding fathers" that is the "constitution" of the treatment free forum, love it or leave it.:). I'm not sure if Sol wants to be considered George Washington or not but he has related a few experiences that could be considered his Valley Forge moments. The real question going forward is how many of the fledgling republics on here will survive? Stay tuned.
 
#52 ·
Ha ha, Jim, thanks for that. But in the grand scheme of things, I'd say I'm more like FDR than a founding father. Dee Lusby is Jefferson, Michael Bush is Lincoln, I came along later and brought about an era of growth and change. Just kidding. Maybe Barry is Washington. I don't know.

But actually, the definition was decided by all users of the forum, INCLUDING those who who have no intention of being treatment free ultimately. Fortunately, they were outvoted in the long run.

And though I am a purist and don't feel like I should need to do things like maintain screened bottom boards or freeze drone brood, I'm comfortable with our current definition of treatments as substances and not 'anything we do in the hive.' Defining it as such only serves to water down the definition and allow affronts to the very idea of being treatment free. That's why we lost 'organic'. It's why there are chemicals, feeds, additives and pesticides which are 'legally allowed to be labeled as organic.' Treatment-free is different. It defines a thing by its philosophy rather than a list of items. We believe that bees should be able to take care of themselves without our intervention at all. We just intervene from time to time to manage them to get them to make more honey for us.

But I digress.

I've read a lot of good info in this thread, and I am very happy to hear stories of people who have tried out methods similar to the one I've come up with. And I'm not saying this was all my idea, I just think it would be easier for beginners to start with nucs and forget about honey production until they get some semblance of a sustainable apiary. I realize it may be difficult, but this is not general beekeeping, this is treatment-free beekeeping and it requires a bit more ability to absorb loss, and that requires a bit more ability to increase. It is my view that a second year beekeeper should be producing his or her own queens, if by no other method than by using swarm cells. We NEED self sufficient, self starting, self reliant, and self confident beekeepers. The standard 'have a couple of hives and requeen every year with commercially produced queens' method is one of the reasons beekeeping is in the state it's in today. Millions of viable queens have been simply killed for no other reason than it was just that time of year. It's a travesty. I'm young and I am to do my best to change that ideology a little before I die.
 
#53 ·
LOL, the young are always in a hurry and the old who don't have much time left are not...

Nucs require much more involvement and have critical timing issues that full size hives don't. If I encourage 5 more people to keep bees because I show how easy it is and you discourage 5 more people because you chose a more difficult course. Who is covering more ground? I don't see that one is less treatment free than another.
 
#55 ·
Your plan is sounding better and better. We didn't harvest any honey this year and we planned our first splits and to start rearing our own queens next year (from surviving, strong stocks). I was going to use one of the guy's methods on here where he doesn't use cups for rearing but pieces of cut comb. I have it bookmarked but I'm really short on time this afternoon, I'll edit it in later tonight. Your two year plan for beginners is almost the exact plan we are on or have considered and assuming at least one hive makes it through the winter, we will follow it until we get up to a maximum of 50 hives. I suppose I should add that our bees are carnis used solely for the purpose of the pollination of (at max) 75 acres of water melon crops.
 
#58 · (Edited)
Nucs require much more involvement and have critical timing issues that full size hives don't. .
Doesn't the above quote imply experience??
=hpm08161947;726130]Doesn't the above quote imply experience??
I dunno...some things can be learned from reading other people's writings and experiences. Everything doesn't have to be experienced to have knowledge of. I wasn't at the Battle of Gettysburg, I didn't experience it, but I know that was one of the bloodiest battles of the War Between the States. I've heard of people putting diesel gas into their gas burners and screwing their vehicle's engines up big time....I'm careful not to do that, not because I've done it before but because I've seen and heard of other peoples' experience doing it.

If we can't use someone else's knowledge and experience do we need to burn all the books and pull the plug on this forum?

Ed
 
#59 ·
It's my position that you can learn all you need from books and the rest from doing. However, you do need experience in order to know what's "easy."

I have experience in treatment-free beekeeping and you all know that I very regularly express my view that it isn't easy, especially if ease is defined as not having hives dying. So if I discourage new beekeepers who aren't looking at beekeeping as more than a passing interest, so be it. We don't need more fodder for those who say that starting treatment-free is impossible.

I don't want to disparage anyone's experience or lack thereof but every once in a while, someone pops up who types of things for which they have no business typing. I think we can stop feeding the troll now.
 
#60 ·
I don't want to disparage anyone's experience or lack thereof but every once in a while, someone pops up who types of things for which they have no business typing.
Solomon, that is called talking out of both sides of the mouth. I got your drift. You are looking for praise. I will learn from someone else.
 
#62 ·
If kicking around ideas is teaching then I guess we are all teachers. My idea of a teacher is someone who is paid to instruct people on proven concepts. I haven't seen too many proven concepts in bee keeping that aren't already taught by individuals that get paid to do so.
 
#64 ·
That's a fantastic method, Oldtimer knows his stuff. I haven't yet tried it, but it's on my list. It simplifies several pertinent aspects of producing queens, no worries about finding the right age larvae or how to scoop them out of the cell. It's a straightforward method, but there are still many things to learn about timing, and recognizing what are the best conditions for queen cell building. After I try it, it will appear on my website. I don't want to write about things with which I don't have experience.

I want to try grafting first because I can make daughters of several queens at the same time. Also, I don't want to cause too much disturbance in the mother hive. Michael Palmer says leave your production colonies alone, let them do their job and produce honey for you.

In the future, I think this will be a great method given the right timing and more hives among which the new queens can be spread. With the few hives I have now, I don't want to replace many queens with daughters of one mother. Actually, I'm not in the habit of killing queens at all, just relegating them to nuc duty unless they're just unbearable.
 
#67 ·
Thank you both Sarge and honeyshack for your inputs.

It's not my intention to reinvent the wheel, but if I thought doing the same thing everyone else is doing was working, I wouldn't be suggesting something different. I don't think it's sustainable small. I know at least two single colony beekeepers whose bees died this year, and it's not even winter yet.

And it's just a plan, not a system, I'm not selling it. Nobody is laying out a ton of cash on my system. I think that makes a huge difference.

Thanks for your time.
 
#69 ·
Soloman,

Nice write up. I like the approach. Would you modify anything for those of us in northern/or mountain environments? Particularly the nucs versus hives.
I am taking this approach. I added 5 hives this year, up from 1 last year. I have lost one (a split that never took off and lost the queen late in the summer). All Tx free.

Thanks for the time you took on this.
Dan Hayden
 
#71 ·
Our honey flow and build up may be shorter and more intense than yours. The balance between not enough bees in the cold of late May, and 5 frames of brood and swarms from crowding in late June is difficult for an experienced beekeeper. A nuc in this environment would require much more management than a 2 lb package installed in 3 deeps. They have enough bees to keep warm in May, and enough room not to swarm in June.

Crazy Roland
 
#73 ·
Solomon,
I think your article will be very helpful for those it is targeting.

I also think that a swarm is likely very much a bad thing, even if one is not managing for honey production:
I am managing for increase, and not for honey. I would certainly be disappointed to lose a substantial part of the livestock in my hive to a swarm!:eek:

I think that the only beekeepers who would not be disappointed with swarming would those who intentionally let hives swarm to encourage a particular genetic line in local feral colonies, and those who keep bees only for the entertainment the activity provides and don't care if they produce anything.

But I also think that if one is going to learn to keep an apiary in a sustainable way, nucs are essential, particularly for those of us who live in the north.
It surely may require more diligence to prevent swarming and be more challenging, but it is important, IMO.
 
#74 ·
In my treatment-free philosophy, swarming is not a bad thing. Healthy hives swarm.

Rather than being strictly prevented, the swarming impulse should be channeled to produce increase or honey. Frankly, I believe that the idea that swarming must be stopped is simply an untenable position and further selects bees that are reliant on human intervention for survival and propagation of the species. A hive that doesn't swarm or won't swarm is a hive that cannot reproduce, and is like one of those thanksgiving turkeys which must be artificially inseminated to lay an egg.

Naturally, a 'swarmy' stock is also a bad thing because all drive is pointed toward reproduction and none to honey production and that's the sort of thing that is consequently reduced if we breed for honey production. But a newbee as a learning experience needs to see a swarm, they need to be able to identify swarm cells vs. supersedure cells, and they need to properly contextualize the reproductive urge of honeybees.

One of the things that I see as detrimental to freshman beekeepers is the idea that they must from day one operate like a commercial beekeeper. They are supposed to prevent swarms and kill their hives and requeen with commercial stock and space nine frames per box and make honey and feed protein patties and syrup and reverse brood chambers and do all sorts of things that they don't need to do and that the bees don't need done to them. And they're supposed to do all these things before they've had time to assimilate and observe exactly what bees do. The methods of a beekeeper must come from an understanding of the natural ways of bees, and how to cope with them, manipulate them, and subvert them to do what is useful for humans.

Further clouding the issue are arguments over terms like 'beekeeper vs. bee-haver vs. bee-meddler.' I find it most useful to have bees first without trying to keep them too hard. "I wanna KEEP BEES, I wanna KEEP 'EM, so they DON'T GET AWAY!! I want them to go get honey and COME BACK HERE!!!" - Eddie Izzard

My plan focuses on having them first and increasing them so as to have a better chance of survival over the first winter treatment-free. It gives the newbee a chance to get their hands dirty, to get in and look at the hives all the time which with normal hives is a detriment, but more necessary with nucs. And if they do swarm, so much the better. There needs to be more swarms. We're low on bee population in this country, remember?
 
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