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treatment free beekeeping - the risks

84K views 385 replies 42 participants last post by  GregB 
#1 ·
ok, looks like i'm about to get opinionated here and open a can of worms, but.....

for what it is worth, i accept with humility that i haven't been around as long as a lot of you have, and don't have the years of experience to draw on and.....

for what it is worth, i am striving to avoid treatments, and avoid even putting syrup on my hives and.....

i absolutely respect each and everyone's right to practice beekeeping as they see fit, unless.....

it involves practices which puts at risk nearby colonies of bees not belonging to that person.

let me explain.

it occurred to me after participating on the 'treatment free beekeeping' forum, that a beginner like myself might get the idea that it is better to practice what i would describe as a 'hands off' approach.

this concern was reinforced by a recent post in which the poster described letting the bees take care of making themselves queenright, and not doing much more than adding boxes. the poster received accolades from others on the forum.

in fairness, i don't know the poster, nor do i know what all they do or don't do with their bees. this is definitely not a personal attack.

and i can tell from reading that a lot of folks who participate on the forum and advocate tfb are outstanding beekeepers.

and one of my all time beekeeping heros, michael bush, also promotes this approach.

here's the problem: if a hive is allowed to become sick and collapse, that hive is likely to get robbed out by nearby healthy hives.

whether it's mites, bacteria, viruses, or otherwise, that problem is likely to get carried back to the healthy hives and threaten them.

so the question is, do we as beekeepers have some responsibility to our neighboring beekeepers and to the feral bee population in this regard?

maybe i have missed it, and if so, i apologize. but rather than seeing advice given regarding how to manage bees successfully so as to not require treatments, what i see is advice given to let the bees work it all out for themselves and eventually you will have treatment free bees.
 
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#50 ·
....and those that treat are specifically maintaing stock, producing queens or drones, from constantly diseased stock.....if they were not diseased, treatment would not be necessary.
Am I to understand that untreated sick bees that die in a year are more harmful than treated sick bees that are propped up year after year? That the untreated hive will negatively affect more hives in the area via robbing in one year than the treated hive will in 3?
if the claim is that untreated bees are sick and treated bees are healthy, how do you reconcile untreated hives that survive and treated bees that are sure to perish without treatment?

Deknow
 
#53 ·
....and those that treat are specifically maintaing stock, producing queens or drones, from constantly diseased stock.....if they were not diseased, treatment would not be necessary.
Am I to understand that untreated sick bees that die in a year are more harmful than treated sick bees that are propped up year after year? That the untreated hive will negatively affect more hives in the area via robbing in one year than the treated hive will in 3?
if the claim is that untreated bees are sick and treated bees are healthy, how do you reconcile untreated hives that survive and treated bees that are sure to perish without treatment?

Deknow
It would help if you would refer to hives treated for diseases as being medicated, imo. Medications address diseases. Hives infested w/ a pest or pests are treated for those pests. They are infested, not infected. They are not sick. Not in the same sense as a colony infected w/ a disease.

Plenty of unmedicated hives die from disease. While varroa mites have killed more colonys of bees than all diseases since records have been kept.
 
#51 ·
Beelosopher,
Just to keep an open mind seeking knowledge. I can see that having a life point of view, a philosophy of life lets say, may already exist in a persons mind. Fine. Nothing against that. To a greater or lesser degree this may be partialy ingrained in a person early on in life. But, don't let that keep you from learning. As it appears it does not in your case.

I remember early days when I read and read and sought info from books and magazines as you describe. That's good. and I am sure a certain amount of that occurs in many people today. Keep it up.
 
#52 ·
If you are curious, you should email Jim. I'm reporting what was presented..... Jim stated explicitly that he doesn't know where the photo was taken and that it doesn't prove that varroa was 'n the u.s. earlier than the books say.....but he did show the slide and stated that he has always been "haunted" by it.....so he clearly isn't convinced that it was taken elsewhere. I misread no date, and the slide was not labeled...all I have to go on is what was presented.

Deknow
 
#54 ·
If you are curious, you should email Jim. I'm reporting what was presented..... Jim stated explicitly that he doesn't know where the photo was taken and that it doesn't prove that varroa was 'n the u.s. earlier than the books say.....but he did show the slide and stated that he has always been "haunted" by it.....so he clearly isn't convinced that it was taken elsewhere. I misread no date, and the slide was not labeled...all I have to go on is what was presented.

Deknow
Okay. Thanks. I will. I just thought it prudent to ask the question and explore other possibilities.
 
#55 ·
Robbing is being mentioned time and again as a major culprit in pathogen transmission. I agree. The question is; Are we inadvertently selecting bees that are prone to being robbers? I had virtually no robbing in my small apiary (20 hives). Until I purchased 4 production queens. Before their introduction my bees wouldn't even clean up my extractor or other equipment. Up to the point I added the production queens my bees were self raised(open mated). After introduction of the new queens robbing has become prolific in the apiary.
 
#57 ·
Gentlemen, medicated or treated puts the discussiononto a different plane. I have been treating all my hives and some nuc's with a formic acid fume board in the fall. I no longer do mite drop counts, just treat and my bees go into winter with a greatly reduced mite load, my bees are therefore not diseased and are less likely to become diseased from the viuses passed on by mites so I fail to see that I could be influencing any other polinaters in any way.
Johno
 
#60 ·
So the "no treating" perspective would be that you are breeding a super mite. Only the strongest mites will survive your treatments and eventually will be able to withstand your treatments. Now you are sending out a super mite to influence the other pollinators.

"just treat and my bees go into winter with a greatly reduced mite load, my bees are therefore not diseased"

Based on what a lot of former "treaters" tunred "nontreaters" have reported on beesource, not sure this is as bullet proof and causal as you indicate. I would venture, less diseased, for the current moment in time. But how long will this hold up?
 
#61 · (Edited)
If someone, somewhere, could provide just such a 100% effective treatment/medication that could be proven to completely eradicate the pest/disease being targeted, such as has happened with small pox. I think I'd be much more interested in trying such treatments. But, I have never heard of such treatments, other than the burning or chemical sterilization of AFB infected beekeeping equipment.

I have heard that despite a long history of treatment and burning, AFB is still around. I've also read that AFB is caused by Paenibacillus larvae ssp. larvae, and that there are now many strains that are resistant to many of the 'treatments' for this disease of honey bees. Also, that this same bacteria is often present in hives, bees, and brood, without them ever showing any symptoms of AFB. To me, this would make it prudent to develop honey bees that were resistant/immune to the bacteria that causes AFB, rather than to keep using treatments/medications that are not effective at eradicating the causative organism.

In this thread it has been suggested that both treatment-free beekeeping or treatment beekeeping have the effect to enhance the transfer of these pests/diseases to other organisms, especially other species of pollinating insects. I believe that the only way to be certain honey bees do not transfer their pests to other pollinators is to eliminate honey bees from the equation, though even this option would be highly problematic.
 
#68 ·
....and those that treat are specifically maintaing stock, producing queens or drones, from constantly diseased stock.....if they were not diseased, treatment would not be necessary.
Am I to understand that untreated sick bees that die in a year are more harmful than treated sick bees that are propped up year after year? That the untreated hive will negatively affect more hives in the area via robbing in one year than the treated hive will in 3?
if the claim is that untreated bees are sick and treated bees are healthy, how do you reconcile untreated hives that survive and treated bees that are sure to perish without treatment?

Deknow


if that was to me, then:

>....and those that treat are specifically maintaing stock, producing queens or drones, from constantly diseased stock.....if they were not diseased, treatment would not be necessary.

i don't think i would claim that those who treat would have constantly diseased stock.

>Am I to understand that untreated sick bees that die in a year are more harmful than treated sick bees that are propped up year after year? That the untreated hive will negatively affect more hives in the area via robbing in one year than the treated hive will in 3?

my opinion is that treated or not, a sick hive that collapses and is robbed out is a threat to neighboring colonies.

>if the claim is that untreated bees are sick and treated bees are healthy, how do you reconcile untreated hives that survive and treated bees that are sure to perish without treatment?

i wouldn't make that claim either, my opinion is that both treated and untreated colonies can become sick and perish.

as suggested by you and others, it comes down to being responsible. it is my opinion that the 'live and let die' approach is irresponsible, unless one's bee's are contained in a biosphere.
 
#73 ·
A couple of observations, if I may.
First, there is a difference between a diseased hive, and a hive infested with varroa. Disease and pests are not the same thing. Treatments for each is different.

Second, the varroa mite can be a vector for disease, i.e. dwv, Israeli xxxx(forget the specific name of the virus), and possibly others.

Third, proponents of treatment admit they do not eliminate ALL the mites in their colonies, they just get the mite load down to a survivable level for the honeybees.

Fourth, both treated and untreated hives, based on the previous three propositions, CAN BE vectors for disease in a person's apiary and to others, via robbing, absconding, swarming, etc.

Now, how many of us had a smallpox vaccination when we were younger? The vaccination gives a small dose of the disease, the body's response builds resistance. If we accept the concept that the honey bee is a super organism, then could not a developed resistance, a survivability to varroa, function in much the same way as a smallpox or other vaccination in a human? The pathogen, pest, disease is still present, maybe in the body (hive, colony) maybe in the environment. But now the colony can survive.

Regarding treatment free and swarming, I can't speak for other treatment free beekeepers, but I lose swarms all the time. I try to practice the traditional methods of swarm control, but not always to great success. Of my 6 hives in the back yard, I've caught 4 swarms in the last couple of years, and those are only the ones I saw. At the height of the honey flow, my hives can have 3-6 extracting supers on them. They are as productive as the hives I had back in the '70's.

And to answer a previously asked question, YES!!! I wish beekeeping was as easy now as it was back then. Plus, Midnight or Starline queens were only $2.50...but then again, I could only sell a pound of honey, labelled and bottled, for a dollar. sooooo......
Regards,
Steven
 
#74 ·
The adequate application of antivarroa mite treatment, at the right time and frequency, can do more than reduce/knock down the number of varroa in a colony, by knocking down those mite counts one also reduces the potential impact of nosema a. and c., and the viruses which varroa can vector.

If one does what one can do effectively one will reduce the impact of those things one can not do much about. such as viruses.
 
#75 ·
True, Mark. And that makes me wonder... are we not all in fact after the very same thing? Reducing the impact of varroa and related issues in what we hope is the best manner possible? Therefore we are simply arguing/discussing the "best" way to accomplish that.

In the discussion, (and there is now another thread dealing with Hop Guard, but since I don't treat, I haven't read) we've seen that the application of chemicals can have unintended side consequences. Sometimes negatively impacting the honeybee itself. Queen issues, brood mortality, etc. What I like about treatment free, and the main reason (besides the cost in $$ and time) I decided to go treatment free is that I thus avoid those side issues and problems. In addition, by not preventing swarming 100%, I am helping repopulate the feral population with bees that do not need nor will they ever get treatments.

As I indicated in an earlier post, I had one hive with a large dwv infection (?), but after a few weeks it disappeared. Occasionally, rarely, I see dwv in my hives...and I look for it.

Rightly or wrongly, I have come to the conclusion after 6 years down this path, that my treatment free bees are demonstrably able to handle varroa and the various varroa related issues that confront us. Plus, and best of all, I got my best crop yet this year!

I'm not telling someone not to treat, I'm just pointing out that there is more than one way to "skin the cat" as they say. And I don't think treatment free beekeepers and bees are the bane for the rest of the populations some folks make us out to be. If someone would do or could do a bonafide scientific study, I'll wager treated bees are a more harmful vector for pests and disease in general, than are treatment free bees. (I don't say "untreated" bees, because generally untreated bees that are not truly treatment free or survivor bees succumb to varroa).
Regards,
Steven
 
#76 ·
Rightly or wrongly, I have come to the conclusion after 6 years down this path, that my treatment free bees are demonstrably able to handle varroa and the various varroa related issues that confront us. Plus, and best of all, I got my best crop yet this year!

Regards,
Steven
That's good for you. Keep doing what you find that works for you. The only real way you will know how well able your bees handle varroa is to expose them to varroa. Not that I would want to do that if I didn't have to.

It seems as though you have something which works for you, keep doing it. What I do keeps my operation alive and this years crop is better than last years by 15 lbs., so I too will keep doing what I am doing. I don't feel ill towards those who don't treat or medicate. It's a choice we all have to make and have the right to make.
 
#77 ·
First of all, the Locke paper cited above has co-evolution between varroa and Honeybees as a working hypothesis, but they're still looking for conclusive evidence. So, we can't take that for granted.

I think that the risks involved in treatment free beekeeping, or Bond bees, are most certainly there in the initial 'live and let die' survivor selection process.

You risk losing whatever you invested into a number of hives.

I also think that there's the 'nuisance' issue, where beekeeping neighbors see treatment-free bees as a cause for concern.

Finally, I've raised the environmental concern for native pollinators, particularly during the initial 'Bond' phase of treatment-free beekeepng.

I think that there's a real difference between between a beekeeper who demonstrates 'due dilligence', but still loses hives, impacts neighboring hives, and native pollinators, unintentionally;
and treatment-free beekeepers who cause similar (if not greater) problems, but do so due to negligence, or through their own beliefs, becoming local 'scofflaws' by ignoring best practices.

Quite frankly, I thought that the 'RNA virus in Hymenopteran Pollinator's paper did a very good job of showing how Honeybees can transfer viruses to other pollinators via contaminated pollen.

If you're impacting native pollinators, with pests and pathogens carried by an exotic livestock species (Honeybees), because you don't treat by choice or by negligence, then you don't have a leg to stand on when you claim to be 'environmentally responsible'.

That's the real risk here. You can't justify treatment-free beekeeping as environmentally superior to beekeepers using standard practices.

What's really crazy here is that I'm hearing treatment-free beekeepers sounding like the Monsantos of the world, deflect, delay, deny.

They're taking some real risks here, but they won't own up to them.

By the way, I do have the proper educational/research status to keep untreated hives. However, I am willing to say that there is a risk to pollinators involved, even though I'm in Mid-Manhattan.
 
#78 ·
By the way, I do have the proper educational/research status to keep untreated hives. However, I am willing to say that there is a risk to pollinators involved, even though I'm in Mid-Manhattan.
I'm having trouble following your argument but I'm a beginner so I may not have all my facts in order.

You're saying that if you don't treat you'll have more disease carrying bees capable of passing it on to other honey bees and natural pollinators. Treating bees doesn't erradicate mites/disease it just brings it down to a level that the colony can survive. Mites/viruses will reproduce pretty quickly, so as long as a few reach the natural polinators or neighboring hives the deed is done. Transmission doesn't depend so much on your colonies having a lot of mites, just on having mites at all. Reducing mites/viruses in your bees might slightly delay transmission but as the near universal widespread of varroa teaches us it won't really stop them. So the natural pollinators will be getting the diseases anyway and there's no one to treat them, their only option is to gain resistance or die.

I can't really see a scenario where treating your own hives helps other hives or natural pollinators in any meaningful way. The discussion if it helps or hinders your own bees is of course a totally separate one.
 
#80 ·
>I can't really see a scenario where treating your own hives helps other hives.....

pedro, the scenario that helps other hives, managed and feral, is the one where the beekeeper does what is necessary, be it good management, 'natural' treatments, synthetic treatments, or otherwise, to not allow their colony to collapse to the point of not being able to defend itself, and succumbing to robbing by other bees, which then carry pests and diseases back home with them.

i have only dealt with american foulbrood myself. that was a no brainer. the hive was destroyed.

i have not had to deal with collapse from varroasis. if it shows up, i would consider removing such a hive to a safe location, busting it down to a single box, reducing the entrance, installing a robber screen, killing the queen, using a soft treatment to rid of the mites, requeen from resistant stock, and try again.
 
#82 ·
>I can't really see a scenario where treating your own hives helps other hives.....

pedro, the scenario that helps other hives, managed and feral, is the one where the beekeeper does what is necessary, be it good management, 'natural' treatments, synthetic treatments, or otherwise, to not allow their colony to collapse to the point of not being able to defend itself, and succumbing to robbing by other bees, which then carry pests and diseases back home with them.

i have only dealt with american foul brood myself. that was a no brainer. the hive was destroyed.

i have not had to deal with collapse from varroasis. if it shows up, i would consider removing this hive to a safe location, busting it down to a single box, reducing the entrance, installing a robber screen, killing the queen, using a soft treatment to rid of the mites, requeen from resistant stock, and try again.
Squarepeg is, according to his own signature, a novice but boy does he catch on fast. :applause:
 
#81 ·
It's the 'Bond: Live and Let Die' methodology, that treatment-free gurus advocate as a way to produce 'survivor' colonies, that is the problem.

Plenty of colonies will develop heavy pest and pathogen loads, that will affect the local environment, before survivor colonies are obtained.

They're taking a risk, with everyone's 'environment', to reach their goal.

That's not 'green'.
 
#86 ·
pedro, i believe it is generally accepted that most hives have a least some mites, so i don't think we're talking about completely isolating a healthy hive from mites.

and i'm not sure how a healthy hive would come in contact with unhealthy hive in any other way except robbing. in what other ways are you considering?

if i a hive is being robbed, it has been weakened. perhaps by an overload of mites, which could hitch a ride back to a healthy hive, and maybe pushing the mite load in the healthy hive above tolerance.

in varroasis, the bees in the sick hive may have also succumb to virulent pathogens, which would also be brought back to the healthy hive.
 
#89 ·
pedro, i believe it is generally accepted that most hives have a least some mites, so i don't think we're talking about completely isolating a healthy hive from mites.
Right, that's my point, the fact that your neighbours treat or not has no bearing of if your bees will be in contact with varroa as it's widespread. It only changes how many mites you'll be in contact with.

and i'm not sure how a healthy hive would come in contact with unhealthy hive in any other way except robbing. in what other ways are you considering?
We've just established that all colonies will come in contact with varroa, are you saying that robbing is the only vector for it? I don't know which vectors exist but I assume robbing isn't the only one.

if i a hive is being robbed, it has been weakened. perhaps by an overload of mites, which could hitch a ride back to a healthy hive, and maybe pushing the mite load in the healthy hive above tolerance.

in varroasis, the bees in the sick hive may have also succumb to virulent pathogens, which would also be brought back to the healthy hive.
I see your point that if you have a hive that already has pathogens and gets a sudden influx from a robbed hive, it might take it over the top in it's own mite count. But since pathogens multiply exponentially if your hive was already unable to deal with the ones it had it was going to die anyway. At best this means your hive was depending on your treatments to stay alive and since the pathogen load went up and your treatment regimen didn't it tipped the scale. I think this says more about how unsustainable treatment is than how dangerous not treating is. And it certainly doesn't explain how it's a danger to natural pollinators who nobody is treating anyway.

My point is very simple:
- The amount of pathogens in your neighbor's hives shouldn't affect *if* your bees will come in contact with pathogens only to *how many* of them.
- Since viruses and varroa can multiply very fast getting 10 pathogens or 1000 pathogens into a hive that has none should only be the difference of a couple of pathogen life cycles thanks to exponential growth. Since these life cycles are pretty short this isn't really a substantial amount of time.

Michael Bush has some simple math to illustrate some of this here:

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesvarroatreatments.htm
 
#87 ·
Few things, just because your bees don't show signs of being sick does not mean they're not vectoring the disease. Treatment free or not, bees are still having to adapt to mites. Letting hives die off to create survivor stock isn't necessarily the smartest approach. You could be sacrificing a lot of genetic diversity this way. Selecting mite tolerant hives etc... isn't rocket science, I think everyone tries to select from their strongest hives that would survive w/o treatment. Selecting for traits already present in the organism isn't evolution, it's just pushing the genetic diversity into a spectrum with the desitred trait(s) you're looking for. I would imagine a true evolved novel mite respsonse will come from a treated hive since the mite pressure affects them more. Genetic analysis on survivor stock definitely needs to be a key focus in bee research.
 
#88 ·
pedro:

http://www.fgp.huck.psu.edu/pdf/Singh_PLoSOne_2010.pdf

If you take the time to read the above, you'll understand why increasing the Varroa load, and subsequently the virus load of a colony, as part of a beekeeping practice, is a cause for concern.

It affects native pollinators. So, it's almost impossible to justify with an 'environmentally friendly' argument.

It's not just an environmental risk, it risks the whole premise behind 'treatment-free' beekeeping.

The 'Bond: Live and Let Die' hypothesis is deeply flawed.
 
#90 ·
The article you linked actually helps establish one of my premises, that you don't need very high pathogen loads concentrated in a single hive to spread disease. Here's a vector that doesn't require robbing or even direct contact between bees. You still haven't explained why you think my reasoning for why that doesn't have a big effect on the health of other bees is wrong. I'll state it again:

Treating an apiary might reduce the pathogen load in the polen but it will surely not eliminate it completely. Native pollinators will still be bringing in the pathogens back from foraging and getting infected by them. Those pathogens will multiply within their populations exponentially. If they don't develop resistance the difference between bringing in 10 pathogens or 1000 is how soon they'll die, not if.
 
#91 ·
pedro:

"Our finding that RNA viruses have a broad host range and are
freely circulating in the pollinator community has important
implications on export/import and movement of managed
pollinators that may bring in new or more virulent strains of
existing pathogens into the environment, with the potential for
deeper impact on our agro-ecosystems and natural ecosystems."

Can you understand why allowing hives to succumb to viruses by not treating them for varroa is THE issue now?

It's higher virus titers that cause death. Not simply virus infection.
 
#92 ·
pedro:

"Our finding that RNA viruses have a broad host range and are
freely circulating in the pollinator community has important
implications on export/import and movement of managed
pollinators that may bring in new or more virulent strains of
existing pathogens into the environment, with the potential for
deeper impact on our agro-ecosystems and natural ecosystems."
All your quote says is that RNA viruses circulate broadly between species and then makes the point that moving bees around helps bring into contact with the local pollinators viruses that might not have been there yet. It doesn't mention concentrations at all.

Can you understand why allowing hives to succumb to viruses by not treating them for varroa is THE issue now?

It's higher virus titers that cause death. Not simply virus infection.
Nowhere does your quote (or as far as I can tell the article) establish that higher concentrations imply higher mortality. Restating the same facts instead of engaging my argument isn't helping me understand your viewpoint better.
 
#93 ·
pedro,

although i do have a science background, it is neither in entomology nor microbiology.

as far as the rationale for not exposing healthy hives to collapsing unhealthy ones via robbing, i am relying on what randy oliver, who's background and experience gives him standing, has written in this regard. (see scientificbeekeeping.com)

mr. oliver absolutely recommends removing sick colonies from healthy yards. he quarantines them, or puts them in what he calls 'hospital yards'.

interestingly, mr, oliver was among the first of commercial beekeepers to abandon the use of synthetic miticides, due to comb contamination and the development of resistance to them by the mites.
 
#98 ·
as far as the rationale for not exposing healthy hives to collapsing unhealthy ones via robbing, i am relying on what randy oliver, who's background and experience gives him standing, has written in this regard. (see scientificbeekeeping.com)

mr. oliver absolutely recommends removing sick colonies from healthy yards. he quarantines them, or puts them in what he calls 'hospital yards'.
This might make sense from a management perspective. In the short term you may want to reduce exposure to get any hives whose chances of survival might be marginal to have a higher chance and thus get a bigger crop. But it certainly doesn't avoid that any hives get a given pathogen (they probably already have it if it's so far along in one hive in the same apiary), and if they do and they're not resistant, you'll still need to treat or they'll die. And you'll still want to breed from the hives that wouldn't have died even if you hadn't quarantined the sick colony. So the quarantine seems like a "let's maximize honey production" measure and not a "let's save the bees from the treatment free folks" kind of measure.
 
#94 ·
>Nowhere does your quote (or as far as I can tell the article) establish that higher concentrations imply higher mortality. Restating the same facts instead of engaging my argument isn't helping me understand your viewpoint better.

on this point pedro, my background does allow me to say unequivocally that it is generally accepted a higher titer of pathogen does result in increased morbitity/mortality.
 
#95 ·
on this point pedro, my background does allow me to say unequivocally that it is generally accepted a higher titer of pathogen does result in increased morbitity/mortality.
I can easily believe that higher concentrations of pathogens in a hive lead to higher mortality. My point is that given how fast the pathogens multiply the limiting factor for the concentration in the hive isn't concentration in the environment it's how well the bees/pollinators handle the exposure. They're going to get it anyway and when they do the limiting factor for the concentration is going to be their ability to handle the pathogens. I don't see where the environment concentration is going to make much difference. That's the main point of my argument that no one seems to dispute. I'm not necessarily convinced by it myself but any argument that states that treatment free endangers other hives has to explain why that's wrong.
 
#96 ·
Pedro:

An untreated colony that is allowed to succumb to viruses will release a huge amount of virus particles into the environment.

Allowing an entire apiary to do so continuously is ill-advised.

You should consult the scientific literature if you don't understand the relationship between varroa mite counts, virus titer, and Honeybee mortality.

The quote from the article is clearly stating that these viruses are a threat to native pollinators.

As for your argument...

:)

WLC.
 
#100 ·
Pedro:

An untreated colony that is allowed to succumb to viruses will release a huge amount of virus particles into the environment.

Allowing an entire apiary to do so continuously is ill-advised.

You should consult the scientific literature if you don't understand the relationship between varroa mite counts, virus titer, and Honeybee mortality.
So you restate the same thing without actually discussing anything, refer me to "the literature" that even though I assume you know doesn't allow you to make simple statements derived from that knowledge that teach me anything new that might help me gain knowledge. That's not helping me learn anything, it's just a suggestion that if I want to learn I should not read this forum and instead go read something else (the literature).

The quote from the article is clearly stating that these viruses are a threat to native pollinators.
That would be swell if the question was "are RNA viruses a threat to native pollinators?". Since the question is "are treatment free hives a threat to native pollinators?" it doesn't help.

As for your argument...

:)
WLC.
I made the argument, not because I wanted to convince anyone, but exactly because I wanted to put into something debatable the extent of my knowledge on the matter, hoping that it would either advance the discussion or allow someone else to explain where my knowledge was lacking. Your ellipsis helps neither of those goals. I see why these discussions can get tiring.
 
#106 ·
Is there not a threshold level in the number of organisms necessary to initiate contagion.
Yes crofter, regarding AFB there certainly is a threshold level of spores necassary to initiate contagion in a honey bee larvae. There is also a threshold level for varroa, though this is somewhat harder to determine, though some will say that there is a specific treatment threeshold. The same is true for Nosema. It is 1,000,000 spores per bee. But this figure is contested by the likes of Randy Oliver because how Nosema impacts a colony of bees is not precise or certain.
 
#99 ·
the flaw in your point as i see has to do with what is called threshold. if the amount of pathogen that they 'get' exceeds that which their immunity can handle you will get disease. if your are not convinced that robbing can lead to levels of pathogen that exceed this threshold, then maybe there is no convincing you.

i see no problem with being treatment free, as long as responsible measures are taken to prevent robbing should a hive collapse.

and i certainly respect your right to your point of view.
 
#101 ·
the flaw in your point as i see has to do with what is called threshold. if the amount of pathogen that they 'get' exceeds that which their immunity can handle you will get disease. if your are not convinced that robbing can lead to levels of pathogen that exceed this threshold, then maybe there is no convincing you.
I agree that there's a threshold to be overcome between a hive having a pathogen at all and having it in enough concentrations to cause disease. It's just my understanding that once a hive is infected if it's not naturally resistant the pathogens will multiply and you will cross the threshold anyway. So imagine these two scenarios with two hives, one yours, one your neighbor's. Pathogen A exists in your neighbor's hive and causes disease after some threshold. Now:

- Your neighbour doesn't treat, his hive dies, is robbed out by your hive, bringing back enough Pathogen A to pass the threshold. You get disease.
- Your neighbour treats, his hive doesn't die yet still caries the pathogen as the treatment doesn't eradicate it. Your hive still comes into contact with the pathogen at lower dosages, it multiplies inside your hive, passes the threshold and you get disease.

So in these two cases the result is the same. Now the interesting case, and this might be where you're coming from is this scenario:

- Your neighbour treats, his hives don't die yet still carry the pathogen as the treatment doesn't erradicate it. Your hive still comes into contact with the pathogen at lower dosages, it multiplies inside your hive but not enough to pass the threshold and cause disease. If at any point your neighbor's hive dies and your bees rob it, the threshold gets passed and you get disease.

Is this a good characterization of what you're thinking? I see where this could be the case if your hive has enough resistance to Pathogen A to keep a small concentration at bay but enough concentration overcomes that resistance and allows multiplication. I don't know if that kind of fragile equilibrium is common in our hives.

and i certainly respect your right to your point of view.
It's not really a point of view as I'm far too inexperience to have one. It's just the extent of my limited understanding.
 
#126 ·
I don't actually "go on and on" as I've so far made a single point that was only my hypothesis, not my opinion or point of view. An hypothesis that squarepeg has engaged and helped me learn from whereas you just repeat the same tired facts that have no bearing on the issue and resort to calling me names. Feel free to ignore my posts from now on as I'll ignore yours.
 
#103 ·
i'll give it one more shot pedro, i'm still having fun here. and let me reiterate that my purpose for starting this thread was to give up and coming beekeepers the 'other side' of the 'treatment free' approach.

again, the problem with your scenario is that i don't know of any way my bees are going to be contaminated by my neighbor's bees unless my neighbor's bees get so sick and weak that they succumb to robbing by my bees.

you say that you are sure there are other ways, but are you sure? when you find out what they are, let me know and we might be able to pursue that line of argument.
 
#127 ·
What I've gathered from reading this forum is that these days you can't expect not to have varroa in your hives, only to not have it in enough quantity to cause disease. So you might not get it from your neighbor's bees, but you'll get it eventually. Is that not the case? Do people still expect to be able to have varroa-free hives?

Bringing the thread full-circle here's what I conclude from the thread:

- If you have a dying hive, whether you treat it or not, you should take steps to avoid contaminating other hives with it as it collapses. If its a treated hive, other hives will rob it and get a few pathogens and some of the chemicals used to treat it, if it's untreated more pathogens and less chemicals.
- If you have untreated hives that are doing fine, it might be because they have higher resistance to pathogens than other hives, so they may increase the concentration of pathogens in the environment (maybe by visiting the same flowers and infecting the polen). On the flipside if you're treating you may be able to reduce the total concentration (if your treatments actually work and the pathogens don't just bounce back) while also introducing other changes in the environment (like killing off some of the beneficial organisms that live in hives). I don't see either option as being more responsible.

The second point is important. Keeping honey bees is never "natural", it's always an intervention in the environment and you can do both types (treatment or not) responsibly. I think the jury is still out on if you can do both in a sustainable way, and I say this wondering which way it will go, not advocating treatment free.

PS: I just noticed how the title of this thread is a bit slanted. It's "treatment free beekeeping - the risks" as if the status quo (treatment) is the basis for comparison. In reality keeping hives in any way is a human intervention in the ecosystem so the real discussion to be had is "treatment vs no treatment - the risks and rewards". And as I said, the jury is still out on which way that will go.
 
#104 ·
There's a similar premise in agriculture. You can have resistant varieties. RNA viruses are a little easier to knock out, DNA viruses can usually still be detected even in resistant lines. the problem there is obvious, that plant can still vector the virus and now you have a population of the virus living in your resistant line. This is how breaking strains are created, levels of infection below threshold for your resistance which allows the pathogen to mutate to become more virulent. I look at it this way... even if I had mite resistant bees, I would monitor mite levels and try to eradicate them if their numbers get too high. Why stress the bees when you don't have to and why harbor large pathogen loads that might evolve to break your resistance.
 
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