Starting out in treatment-free beekeeping

[beemandan]

You jump over people for badmouthing researchers, but I guess well intentioned beekeepers are open season.

I would never suggest that the Lusby's were or that Dee is dishonest....which is what frosts me when folks accuse researchers without evidence.
You think that 'dreamt it up' is inappropriate?
In my opinion, Dee has done a good job of documenting the fact that humans increased the size of cells during the development of foundation. But how could she connect that 100+ year old change with the collapse of bee colonies under pressure of an exotic parasite that was introduced 80 years later? If you can provide a logical path that she followed to come to that conclusion....I'll be happy to reword my statement.

[sqkcrk]

Actually, it can.

hive |hīv|
noun
a beehive.
• the bees in a hive.
• a thing that has the domed shape of a beehive.

A hive of bees can die. A bee hive, being the boxes or cavity that bees reside in can't die and more than your house can die. When you die, the house you once occupied doesn't die.

The trouble is that some people refer to a HIVE when they mean the set of boxes making up the structure honeybees may occupy and then use the same word to refer to the COLONY residing therein.

I really thought you would support more clearly defined terminology.

[Barry]

It's all about reading words in context to know how the word is being defined, since many words have several definitions.

[beemandan]

The trouble is that some people refer to a HIVE when they mean the set of boxes making up the structure honeybees may occupy and then use the same word to refer to the COLONY residing therein.

I've had this same argument on several occasions. What can even be worse is that some folks will use both terms interchangeably. And one moment they are referring to the bees as a hive and a sentence later as a colony. And then...what really makes me crazy is when the same people call the boxes a colony.
I'm thinkin' that you may just want to leave the semantics alone here....for the most part, when I've complained I've only gotten blank stares.

[Acebird]

The trouble is that some people refer to a HIVE when they mean the set of boxes making up the structure honeybees may occupy and then use the same word to refer to the COLONY residing therein.

Welcome to the English language or any spoken language. It is not a science. It changes over time and it changes from location to location. Spelling changes and meanings change. That is why I laugh when people get hung up on perfection when it comes to language.

Are we going off the deep end here on Solomon's thread? Sorry Solomon, didn't mean it.

[Solomon Parker]

....for the most part, when I've complained I've only gotten blank stares.

*blank stare*

I leave to go play LEGO Batman with my wife and this is what happens while I'm gone?

It's a wonder I ever leave at all.

[beemandan]

this is what happens while I'm gone?

Yes..and on the eve of a holiday, no less. You should stay close!

[sqkcrk]

Sol,
LEGO Batman w/ the wife? Is that what you kids are calling it these days? Oh my.

[hpm08161947]

Sol,
LEGO Batman w/ the wife?

That is the correct terminology when there are 13 year olds on the Forum.

[jim lyon]

That is the correct terminology when there are 13 year olds on the Forum.

Havent heard that one. Can I assume it might be similar to one of the many definitions of "taking ones talents to South Beach"?

[Solomon Parker]

Was playing on the Wii.

[Michael Bush]

>There are also those who are treatment-free without it (small cell).

I haven't had any Varroa issues since regression. I don't know of any large cell treatment free people who have had that experience. They still seem obsessed with Varroa.

>I found it interesting that now M Bush has been too busy to put much care into his hives, his hive numbers have dropped from 200, to 60. These kind of losses would have been inconceivable pre varroa, even in unmanaged hives. What's presumably happened to the Bush apiary is he has small cell, and chemical free wax, but the management aspect has been removed due to time constraints, and that's obviously had a huge effect.

Just to clarify, that's two years where I did not even SEE them (was not even in the same country as them)--no splits to make up for any winter losses and swarms going to the trees. Plus I'm sure there were less than two hundred when I left. Probably more like 100 hives and 50 nucs at that point. We had -27 F (-33 C) for about a month last winter and that always makes for some losses and these had not been fed, worked, split or otherwise touched in more than a year at that point. I would guess that was about 25% losses each winter for the last two which with no feeding or balancing or even adding supers is higher than I would like but not all that bad considering. If you figure the swarms in I would say there are actually more bees than when I left, they just aren't in my hives. Certainly pre-Varroa, pre- N. cerana, pre-Tracheal mite, pre-DWV, pre-other viruses etc. I would have expected better. Obviously management would have helped a lot in keeping those swarms in my hives instead of the trees and insuring less winter losses by making sure they all had a full pantry going into winter. Not to mention that the wind that took out six of my mature trees in my yard (spread out over three occasions) also toppled some of them in the beeyards, which I would have caught had I been there...

[Solomon Parker]

Sorry Mike, I should have let you explain things. But you know how you get deified!

I have a similar sort of occurrence in my beekeeping history. Some here have questioned my going from 20 to 5 in five years. But I didn't even see them for 2 1/2 years of that time, and I didn't do any splits because I had overstretched my finances and couldn't afford boxes. So I allowed the hives to die off that were going to die off because I was expecting it anyway. Then I consolidated equipment so each hive had a full compliment (plus some after 2.5 years.)

"These kind of losses would have been inconceivable pre varroa, even in unmanaged hives."
Yes, but we're not pre-varroa. I don't understand why people still feel the need to say things like "We were all treatment-free before varroa." We're not. Being treatment-free when there's nothing to treat is not a virtue, it's normal. Leave 200 commercial hives alone for 2 years and see how many of those are left. There won't be many. The last conventional beekeeper I saw go cold turkey one year lost about 38 out of 50. I think Mr. Bush did pretty good.

I did the math. In 27 generations, a queen has more direct ancestors than there are base pairs in the DNA of the honeybee. Nothing that far back matters. There simply isn't the storage space for the genetic information. We must work with what we have today, not some imagined optimum pulled out of the way back machine.

[Oldtimer]

Was playing on the Wii.

Sure.

I did the math. In 27 generations, a queen has more direct ancestors than there are base pairs in the DNA of the honeybee. Nothing that far back matters. There simply isn't the storage space for the genetic information. We must work with what we have today, not some imagined optimum pulled out of the way back machine.

Sol I can't agree with what you are trying to say there at all. The genetics that were around 27 or more generations ago are not some "imagined optimum pulled out of the way back machine". They are the genetics that were there. Whatever maths you did doesn't change that.

[Solomon Parker]

My point was that there's nothing special about then that applies to now. It's like saying how great the peaches were in 1966. It doesn't matter.

[Oldtimer]

Oh, well that's different entirely. What's special to you, is a matter of your opinion.

Some people do think genetic diversity matters.

[Solomon Parker]

Some people do think genetic diversity matters.

Not sure if you're referring to me or what, but I do think genetic diversity matters. That's why I buy a couple of new queens from somewhere in the country every year. It's part of my methodology in beekeeping. Additionally, I don't kill queens, or at least I haven't yet. One of the biggest disservices done to the beekeeping industry is the wholesale killing of queens that goes on every year and especially with swarmed queens.

People say their survival rate is 95% or whatever, but they killed and replaced all their queens. Their survival rate was 0%.

Let's see how that stirs up the hornet's nest.

[Oldtimer]

Ok well your back on track, partly anyway.

So you don't kill queens, (except when you let all the bees in the hive die), presumably as a claim to preserving their genetics.

So what was back then does matter now?

[Solomon Parker]

So you don't kill queens, (except when you let all the bees in the hive die), presumably as a claim to preserving their genetics.

With as tough as survival is, I think killing queens is a disservice to our genetic diversity and survivability. At the very least, acceptable (gentle, etc.) survivor queens should be utilized for nuc duty or drone mother duty or something like that.

So what was back then does matter now?

Methods. Get on Michael Bush's website and read all his old beekeeping books. Very little has changed in how to actually keep bees once you remove all the hullabaloo involved in feeding and treating and preventing and coddling. I read Jay Smith's "Queen Rearing Simplified" and "Better Queens". Both great books. But I find whinging about how great it used to be, to be particularly useless. Not that you do that too much.

[jim lyon]

Sol: We kill queens every year...lots of them. We also bring in new genetics and breed from our own hives that have the most desirable traits. The thing is, though, the drones in all those hives carry on their genetic lineage through their matings, that's really the big difference between letting hives die and operating in a manner that allows us to not just maintain our numbers but to increase them if we choose.